Consuelo’s father, this man on whom Consuelo now leaned, as she followed the whispering skirts of her bridesmaids and approached the start of the nave, from which all of New York waited to watch her be married. Alva had forbidden her daughter from having any interaction with the Vanderbilts at all since the divorce. Consuelo wasn’t allowed to accept any gifts from that side of her family, and none of them, save her grandmother, Maria Louisa Kissam Vanderbilt, Billy’s widow, was even invited to her wedding. Because the others weren’t invited, though, her grandmother had refused to come.
