Virginia Couple Crashed State Dinner

WASHINGTON, D.C. - There are big questions about how a couple from Virginia was able to crash the party at President Obama's first State Dinner on Tuesday. The two apparently were cleared though security even though the Secret Service didn't know they weren't on the guest list.

The Secret Service might not have known who Tareq and Michaele Salahi were, but folks who live near their hometown near Linden, Virginia do. They are reacting with a mixture of shock and amazement at what the couple pulled off at the White House.

The ultimate party crash happened during President and Mrs. Obama's first State Dinner for the Prime Minister of India, and mingling in amongst the Katie Courics and Steven Spielbergs and of course, the heads of state, in strolled the Salahis. She was looking fabulous, he was in a tux-- but neither one of them had the one important accessory one needs for a White House dinner: an invitation.

Michaele and Tareq Salahi didn't have invitations because they weren't invited. The two even posted facebook pictures of themselves hobnobbing with the White House chief of staff, Katie Couric, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and even the vice president of the United States.

• TO SEE ALL THE PHOTOS ON THE SALAHIS' FACEBOOK PAGE, FOLLOW THIS LINK
  
  

Before Tareq and Michaele Salahi became the infamous couple who crashed the President's first State Dinner, she scrambled to book a last-minute appointment the Erwin Gomez Salon in Georgetown.

"I said, 'Why is this so urgent? What's going on?' I know how she is-- when she says sometimes she is going to come, she doesn't show up," Erwin told FOX 5.

Gomez, who did her makeup, says she explained she had gotten an invitation to the White House dinner.

"When I had her in my makeup chair, I was asking, 'How did you get invited?' She says, 'I got invited, I'm just really blessed I got invited,'" Gomez said.

As she was getting ready, a camera crew from the Bravo network followed her around the salon.

Bravo Media confirmed late Thursday that Michaele Salahi is being considered as a participant in the upcoming "The Real Housewives of D.C." program, and on the day of the dinner was being filmed around Washington by Half Yard Productions, the producer of the program.

"Half Yard's cameras were not inside the White House. They filmed the couple preparing for the event," Johanna Fuentes, vice president, communications, for Bravo Media, said in an e-mail. She said the Salahis "informed Half Yard that they were invited, the producers had no reason to believe otherwise."

Fuentes referred further questions to the couple's attorney and publicist.

"She was telling me that she got the invitation in the mail from the White House. She was completely excited," says stylist Peggy Ioakim, who did her hair.

"I asked her, 'Where is your invitation? Do you have it with you? Can I see it?'" said Ioakim. "She was really excited to show me. She was actually going in her purse to get it."

It turns out, there was no invite. But the Salahis got through several security checkpoints and were able rub elbows with several VIP's at the party.

Gomez says he actually met her about eight years ago. He was the makeup artist for her bridal party, and attended her wedding.

"I've never seen a bridal party this large in my life," Gomez told FOX 5. "There were 24 bridesmaids."

He styled a lot of people, but says there was no money to show for it. Gomez says he never got paid for his work.

In recent years, he hasn't had much of a relationship with the Salahis. But like many others, he is shocked by the couple crashing the President's party.

"I feel sorry for them," Gomez said. "But I'm a little embarrassed for them as well."

Dan McDermott, publisher of the Warren Report newspaper has covered the couple and their financially-troubled winery in northwestern Virginia, who he describes as social scene regulars and reality show wannabes.

"Nobody seems surprised that they could pull this off," said McDermott. "I've been to the White House. You have normally-- there is some ID check or something is going on."

Despite embarrassment, the Secret Service says the couple did pass through metal detectors and the safety of the President was never at risk, but added, "Initial findings identified a Secret Service checkpoint which did not follow proper procedures."

One new procedure almost certainly on the way is to ask to see an invitation before you let somebody into the President's party.

It is not clear how close the couple ever actually got to the President, and it is believed that since all of the seating inside the ballroom that was constructed on the south lawn was assigned, the Salahis left the White House before dinner.
"They just went to a party. They didn't do anything wrong," Paul Morrison, a Virginia attorney who has represented Michaele and Tareq Salahi in the past, told The Associated Press.

A Secret Service investigation of the security breach, now under way, will help determine whether Morrison