Charmaine Daisley

"Hi, hi, hi. Come in, have a seat, make yourself at home." Warmed by my greeter's invitation, I gingerly enter an open-floor-plan living room and instinctively raise my head trying to catch a full-length view of the most captivating Christmas tree I have ever seen.
I get a big hug and kiss from my host (we've met before, you see), before I plunk myself down into a soft, faux-suede couch. I can't help feeling like I just stepped into a fairy tale and all the world's a wonderland.
I'm at the home of Brian Gopaul, local interior decorator and corporate event planner, who is no stranger to decorating all kinds of spaces for a wide range of top-notch clients, with his brilliant design concepts. The towering tree in-his living room has left me speechless - well almost - not so much that I can't ask the dozen or so questions I have dancing around in my head about this fascinating creation.

"A tree at home is a very personal thing as compared to a commercial tree," Brian says in response to my first question, "so whatever you do with your tree at home must represent something triggered by some sort of emotion of either you or your entire family."
He is eager to share the event and feelings that went into the conceptualising and decorating of his tree.
"The background of my tree this year started with a group of good friends, including me, travelling to Boston last year. It was winter time then and all the friends that went on that trip are in Trinidad for Christmas this year, so the inspiration for this tree came from a year ago and represented love, it represented friendship, and togetherness and unity - what the friends actually share.
"I went with white decorations because white was the season when we were there and also I wanted to show the white over a green tree which to me represented the evergreen friendship we shared no matter the season of our lives."

Brian revealed that it took a little over a week to create his gift of love. "Every day I pass I still feel like I want to put something more to it," he said, laughing. Not that it needs anything else, mind you. There are silver bells and turtledoves, white poinsettia, dangling powdery silver globes, and a huge two-foot lit star crowning the masterpiece.

There is also a lot of white tinsel on Brian's tree. He knows that most people feel tinsel is a bit outdated as far as Christmas tree decoration go, but it just felt right for this, "I thought, why not tinsel?". How can I use tinsel to get the snowtype effect I wanted? So, in the end I  I added a little glitter on it so it gives you that feeling  of the sun shimmering on the snow. "