It’s not Christmas in Dublin until The Westbury unveil their festive decorations. Every year, both guests and locals rave about the adornments, whether they’re staying for the night or enjoying a festive afternoon tea.

Throughout the year, the floral arrangements found throughout the hotel are created by the team at Appassionata Flowers, who also craft the Christmas decorations. We spoke to Ruth Monahan, Managing Director of Appassionata Flowers, to see what happens behind the scenes.

“With The Westbury, it’s a project that starts earlier in the year. We start buying for the hotel in July, and planning it out the process. We need to tie in with the décor, and what’s really important with The Westbury is that it’s very family driven towards Christmas time. So we make it really warm and inviting, especially at Christmas.

“Flower-wise, what we do is move the flowers to different areas, and bring in reds, and warm colours. But really when we decorate for Christmas, we tend to bring in a lot of plants, trees that we dress… this year the hotel bought these amazing big Nutcrackers. They come from a tiny little town in Germany - they’re fabulous, really well made and about two metres high.

“We put a lot of effort in to really accessorise the hotel - it takes a full week to decorate. The final thing we do is put in a fresh pine wall, so when people enter they get that smell of Irish pine as they walk in. 

“We put wreaths up in the Gallery, too. The wreaths and the trees have to tie in together, because it’s a big space. They really dress the windows well, and we put them up on the outside as well. In the hotel, there are eight wreaths, and then we put in twelve trees. Some of them are in the bedrooms and in the business areas as well.

“We build on the tree decorations each year. Each year we revise the plan – we haven’t had trees downstairs in a while, but we have this year. We brought special pots and accessorized with a copper look. We treat Balfes in a different way, because there are so many different spaces within the hotel. With Wilde, again there’s a totally different treatment so we work with a lot of greens, coppers and golds, and we went for a more natural look with the mantlepiece there.

“I think the main tree is really beautiful. There’s a lot of texture there, and I love the idea of the Nutcrackers. You’re creating a true festive feeling, with a design edge to it. There are so many photos taken in front of it!”

You can find out more about Appassionata Flowers here or on Instagram.