Governor’s Mansion decorated for holidays by Starkville florist

JACKSON, Miss. (WCBI) – A Starkville florist and her team have been working hard getting the Governor’s Mansion ready for Christmas.

With one day to go before a public open house at the Governor’s Mansion, Hannah Krapac Wamsley was busy making sure all the Christmas decorations were just right, and that includes checking model trains, under the trees.

Wamsley is the lead florist at State Floral.  The Starkville based florist was selected as this year’s overall winner of the ‘Christmas at the Mansion” contest.

Owner Allison Siddall, staff, and volunteers started work the day after Thanksgiving.  They decorated two parlors, four bedrooms, and the outside of the historic mansion. The theme  this year is “Celebrating Children and the Magic They Bring to Christmas.”

“My main goal was to have a lot of details in each room that really brought alive the magic of Christmas, so some of the trees there’s a lot of animation, children would love. We would start in the mornings at eight, they were gracious to let us stay until we were finished each night,” Siddall said.

There are eighteen Christmas trees in the historic section, and each mantle is decorated.  Wamsley says each room has a theme, corresponding to the room’s color scheme.

“In the gold parlor, some furniture is like blue, paler, and we had a ribbon with similar color, we did funkier colors in there, the cream bedroom was neutral, we were more old school, vintage, green bedroom is snowy room, easy to incorporate those colors, greens, white, grayish,” Wamsley said.

As part of the theme this year for “Christmas at the Mansion” the call went out for kids to send in Christmas ornaments to be put on display.  The response was much better than expected.

“We had over eleven hundred ornaments sent in and we had planned on one tree, we have three or four now.  We had an elementary school submit ornaments, no ornament is alike, it’s really amazing, one Girl Scout in McComb did a clay mansion and it’s amazing,” said First Lady Elee Reeves, who oversees the “Christmas at the Mansion” contest.

Siddall says decorating the Governor’s Mansion was a huge honor, a lot of hard work, and a lot of fun.

“When we got selected I was so surprised and so honored, and it turned out to be so much more fun than I could have ever imagined, the staff, everybody here has been so sweet and so much hospitality, and we have had the best time,” Siddall said.

The decorations will be up through the first few days of the new year.