Lake Minnewaska Website

Paulietta left this message in the guestbook section and I wanted to see if anyone else had or knew someone who got married at Minnewaska.

By the way Paulietta, I *do* have some of your wedding pics, but we scanned a group of pictures improperly, and those were in the group. I'll add a couple to the end of this message.

Here's what Paulietta wrote:

"Hi Sam, I just looked at some of the new material you added to the Minnewaska site following your September visit with Ken and me at Windsong. Great job! Regards to Nina. A thought: How about gathering information about the many people who were married at Lake Minnewaska? Ken Phillips, Jr. and I were married on a rockledge just below Cliff House in August 1980. We have some photos that Ken's mom and dad took of our wedding that we could share. Any more Minnewaska Wedding Couples out there? Best regards, Pauleitta Phillips
Pauleitta Phillips
St. Augustine, FL USA - Thursday, November 29, 2001 at 15:35:52 (EST)"

<img src="http://www.lakeminnewaska.org/images/pandkwedding.jpg">

Here's one that has been digitally sharpened. Like I said, we scanned a series of slides at too low a resolution which caused them to be very grainy when we enlarged them.

Two friends of mine, Brandon and Laurel Miller got married on the cliffs in July of 2000. Unfortuatley I have almost no memories of the houses, as I was born in 1977. However my father worked as a carriage driver in the 1960's. I now live and work at Mohonk Mountain House.

I don't remember their names, but I was the carriage driver for at least 3 weddings in 1978.

We spent some amount of time polishing brass and tieing Mountain Laurel to all the uprights (and bridles, if the horses promised not to eat them).

My biggest concern was the tossing of the rice ... we almost didn't HAVE a carriage for the bride and groom! (Not a good thing to pepper horses on their backsides).

I also loved stopping halfway to Cliffhouse for the bride and groom's pictures with the lake in the background.

Thanks for the "new look" to the website, Sam. I am learning to navigate through it tonight. With my new cable ISP, viewing the old films are great! You should get Ken and Suzanne Phillips to help you identify some of the people in the promo films. They were all done to advertise Minnewaska and not just "home videos," which did not exist then!!

Re weddings: Somewhere I have more photos of our wedding in 1980, that I will share with you if they ever surface. You know that our life has been "packed in boxes" since June 1987.

Ken and I made a home video in spring 1981 for a couple married at the top of Awosting Falls. It was just something we thought would be "nice" for the couple. Our video camera was purchased a few months earlier to record the exploratory well drilling below Awositng Falls and when we learned of the wedding, off we went with our 40 lb. Hitachi video. (I may be exaggerating about the weight, but it was a side pack deal). Ken shot the video with me "directing" and then we rushed back to our cottage under the Wildmere watertower, copied the VHS tape and gave it to the couple. This was before wedding videos were something everyone did! I just wonder if the wedding couple ever realized why we did this for them? Ken and I would have loved to have had a video record of our own wedding with our three children on the rock ledge overlooking Lake Minnewaska. This was not possible then, but we wanted that happy couple to have a video record of their beautiful spring wedding. We must have the original stored in a box somewhere. Future website material.

Thanks again, Sam, for all the work you do on the Minnewaska website.

Pauleitta Phillips