All Mariah wants for Christmas... is six Scousers flown to the USA to put up her tree!
‘She wouldn’t entertain artificial decorations’
SHE FAMOUSLY has teams of people to cater to her every whim. But when it comes to the season of peace and goodwill, all Mariah Carey wants for Christmas is a specially trained team of... six Scousers and a lorry load of fairy lights.
For The Mail on Sunday can reveal that a Liverpool-based company, The Christmas Decorators, has beaten the competition to put up the singer’s 15ft trees, install 20,000 lights and decorate her home from top to bottom at a cost of at least £30,000.
Last week – just like every other year – the company sent a sixstrong team to Aspen, Colorado, to spend an entire day at the star’s rented mansion. They put up an indoor forest of Douglas firs, pine garlands and yards of twinkling lights in every snow-capped tree around the home.
‘Mariah tends to have the living room areas covered in garlands and Christmas trees, which we tend to have cut down a few days before,’ said Nick Bolton, the company chief executive. ‘They’re always real. She wouldn’t entertain artificial decorations.’
Carey’s trees are grown at a specialist farm in Wisconsin, where they are lovingly pruned throughout the year to ensure perfect symmetry. This year’s firs are festooned with 18 in cones from giant redwood t rees, 150 red and gold baubles – glass never plastic – slices of dried orange peel, cinnamon sticks and fresh eucalyptus.
The company also used sprigs of fresh holly and mistletoe around the house. And snow machines are reportedly on hand in case the Aspen weather fails.
Carey is yet to post pictures of the latest display, but those from previous years have seen her pose in her underwear next to a 12ft Douglas fir groaning from tip to trunk with golden musical notes, butterflies, orbs and angels.
And she has also made a tradition of taking a horse-drawn sleigh ride through the ski resort while belting out her biggest hit to a backing track. All I Want For Christmas Is You has reportedly earned her more than £ 47 million. Back at home, Father Christmas arrives on a sleigh pulled by real reindeer – naturally – and hands out presents to her twin seven-year-olds, Moroccan and Monroe.
Mr Bolton, whose clients include everyone from Steven Spielberg to Wayne Rooney, said that the firm’s clients can spend anything from £12,000 getting their homes decorated for Christmas.
‘For £20,000 you get a 15ft to 20ft decorated tree, all of your outside lit, a garland across the fireplace and up the bannisters,’ he explained.
The Christmas Decorators also light up the Bethlehem Christmas tree in Manger Square.
Carey is a self-confessed ‘Christmas geek’ and, according to a source from her entourage, ‘she will make sure that every house she goes to this Christmas – New York, LA or Aspen – will be made up like a wonderland’. Speaking recently, Carey said: ‘It’s a production, darling. I’m obsessed with Christmas.’