Saskia & Daniel's wedding at a family home on Lake Skaneateles is such a beautiful way to start the week! She is stunning wearing HB6556 with a simple twist-tie sash and gentle bits of baby's breath flowers tucked throughout her hair. Each part of this wedding, from the intimate lakeside ceremony to the porch dance party is full of love and joy. Thank you so much to Craig Griffin Photography for allowing us to take part in this couple's very special day! Congratulations again to Saskia & Daniel. 
Saja: How did you meet?
Saskia: We met in college at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania (if you want more detail about that...our (well dressed) friend wearing the suspenders in the wedding photos introduced us. He recruited Dan to be a Cub Scout leader in the town where our school was and I was in charge of youth mentoring projects in our university’s community service office and on a weekend training retreat for all mentors, Dan asked me out.)
Saja: How did he propose?
Saskia: I came home from work on a regular Tuesday evening, a bit sweaty and flustered from my long bike commute home. Dan had cleaned and was cooking dinner which were pretty usual but as I tried to cool down he told me he had a gift for me. It was a handmade journal and in the first page he had written me a note about all the highlights ups and downs we had experienced over the years we have known each other and how he was excited for all the things to come together. And when I turned the next page, he had written ‘Will you marry me?’ and cut a square into several layers of the paper where the ring (his great great aunt’s) was inside. After a moment of shock, I of course said yes!
We wrote our vows in that same journal and read from it during our wedding ceremony.
Saja: Where did the wedding take place? What made you choose there?
Saskia: Dan’s family lakehouse on Lake Skaneateles, NY (Finger Lakes). The house was built by Dan’s great great grandparents in the early 1900’s so lots of family and historical significance there. And it’s been preserved to look exactly the way it did when it was originally built. Dan grew up going there every summer and we’ve been going there together since we started dating. It’s beautiful and an incredibly special place to us both.
Saja: Is there anything you can point out about your pictures that we might not have noticed?
Saskia: We had a very small (16 people total) Quaker style wedding which meant that it began with a period of sitting in silence and everyone participates in the ceremony by sharing a text (something they wrote, a poem, a blessing, song lyrics) and also a specially made wedding certificate that everyone signs.
The photos where we are reading a text and there is a speaker is a message from my grandmas back in the Netherlands (she is 92 and could not fly over) that my friends recorded as a surprise and played (and handed out translations) during the sharing portion of the ceremony.
Saskia continued, "The photos taken at the bridge and also in the rocking chairs in front of the fireplace are recreations of some old photos from the early 1900’s of Dan’s relatives taken in the same spots."
Saja: Which of the photos is your favorite? Why?
Saskia: So many amazing ones but I think the one of us down by the lake holding sparklers is my favorite. There is just so much joy captured in the entire frame of that photo. The one of us kissing (with me on my tippy toes and surrounded by this circle of loved ones) is a close second.
Saja: What was your favorite part of the day?
Saskia: Honestly the whole day and night were amazing. But the ceremony was just incredibly emotional and moving not just Dan and I reading our own written vows but all the incredible things that our friends and families shared.
Dancing on the porch was a close second favorite part. Because it was an intimate group of people we are closest with and because we spent 4 days together up at the lake house everyone was very well acquainted with each other and I really felt and saw that while we were dancing.
Saskia said, "Neither Dan nor I had had given much thought to our wedding day or envisioned it in great detail before we got engaged and when we were planning it we knew it would be fun and meaningful, but while it was happening and also now, we both say that it was truly one of the happiest days of our lives....so far :)"
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