Places We Love: O Christmas Tree!! @ The Biltmore Estate

It's time for the third and final post from our Biltmore Estate trip and we saved the best for last! Since its Christmas time we felt it was necessary to have a post all about Christmas! In comes a post featuring all the amazing Christmas trees and festivities you can find at the Biltmore Estate!

Any opportunity to visit the Biltmore Estate should be taken advantage of, but Christmas time is the most magical of all! Something that makes Christmas more special at the Biltmore is that the official opening of the estate happened on Christmas Eve in 1895. During Christmas, there is so much more to explore. To start off there are over 100 hand decorated trees to see all throughout the property! Don't worry we will get to those later! In addition to the trees, there are 25,000 ornaments, 1.5 miles of fresh garland, 500 wreathes, over 2000 poinsettias, and 100 kissing balls. Before even entering the house, you will see 300 hand lit lights and a 55 foot Norway spruce that holds over 45,000 lights.

2020 will mark the 125th year of Christmas at the Biltmore. The theme for this year is Christmas 1895, taking the Biltmore back to its roots. There will be lots of natural elements in addition to colors that would have been seen during this time like reds, greens, blues, and golds. The most iconic of all the Christmas trees lives in the banquet hall. Every year a ceremony is held as a 35ft Fraser Fir is brought into the banquet hall. Holding 500 lights and 500 ornaments, the banquet hall tree is a symbol of the season to come. Andrew's tree farm specifically grows trees for the Biltmore every year. The tree that came to the estate this year is over 30 years old and weighed 2500-3000lbs when it arrived on the property.

But the decorations don't end in the banquet hall! Each room is given its own mini theme featuring lots of greenery, ribbons, and trees. To execute all of the decorations around the house it takes the staff about a month, from early October to early November. While there are over 100 trees total throughout the Biltmore Estate, 55 of those can be seen on the interior. While the banquet hall tree is the only real tree inside the house, there are plenty more to see that are just as festive! See some of the photos below of the beautiful trees all around the Biltmore.