Two thousand people were invited to the wedding. Mrs. John Jacob Aster, Mrs. William H. Vanderbilt, Mrs. Horace Greeley, and General Ambrose Burnside were there. Members of the church complained about the "marriage of mountebanks". They became angry when they were told they could not sit in their own pews. Much of the public curiosity about the marriage was based on an interest in the sexual mechanics of Thumb and Lavinia. Barnum did not encourage or discourage this interest.