Christmas at the Gaylord Opryland Resort

After Christmas, we stopped by the Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville to have a look around on our way home from a visit to my sister and her family in Atlanta. We enjoy visiting the hotel when we are there for the Lads to Leaders convention each Easter, and we were interested to see what they had in the way of Christmas decorations.

Perhaps we had our hopes up just a little too high, because everything wasn’t quite as grand as what we had imagined it to be. But we did enjoy seeing what we could see, and of course we took more than a few photos of it all while we were there.

We first entered the hotel in the Cascades area, where there were lots of lights hung from the ceiling, some in straight lines, and others in geometric shapes. The lights added a neat touch to me. But in some ways, they just felt like lights and not all that much like Christmas. I know the lights were there for Christmas, but something about it didn’t quite feel Christmasy to me.

The Garden Conservatory area had similar hanging lights, along with toys parachuting in. I guess that was Santa’s way of delivering here - dropping things by parachute.

At the bottom of the previous photo, you can see the top of the gazebo in the Garden Conservatory. I have shared photos of this gazebo before, and it was interesting to see it with red poinsettia flowers around the fountain this time.

At different places around the resort were Christmas trees designed by different country music artists, such as this one by Martina McBride. But the trees weren’t just to look at - they were also up for auction, with the proceeds going to charities specified by the artists. Each tree was different, and the auction included different items as well, such as a book by the artist or backstage passes. It was a pretty neat idea.

What is better than Christmas lights on palm trees? Not much, in my opinion. These colorfully-lit trees were in the Delta Island section.

Here is a look at the river running through the Delta Island area. You can also see two of the large lighted wreaths that were hung throughout this area. I thought those were a nice touch, and to me wreaths add more of a Christmas feel than just lights by themselves.

I like this view of the seating area for one of the Delta Island restaurants with the string lights illuminating the space. This isn’t necessarily a Christmas photo, although you can see one of the wreaths to the left, along with some garland on the tower at the right.

This Christmas tree was by Sara Evans, and some of the “ornaments” hanging from it were liner note booklets from some of her CDs. And it has the added benefit of being near one of those palm trees with the colorful lights, too.

We finally found our way to the main Christmas tree for the hotel, which was over near the Convention Center. Actually, the tree was sitting on top of a fountain that is there, which we thought was interesting, because you could look through the “branches” of the tree to see the dry, empty fountain underneath.

I took this photo of Laura and Jaylin in front of the large Christmas tree. It was quite a popular photo spot, as you can imagine, but I thought the tree and its lights made a nice backdrop.

Here is another view of the Christmas tree. As you can see, it is quite large, maybe 40 or 50 feet tall. And if you have ever seen photos of our Christmas trees, you know that we like lots of lights on our trees, so we definitely liked all the lights on this one.

One more photo of Laura and Jaylin with the large tree in the background, but farther away so that you can see the whole tree and not just part of it.

I should point out that there was also a Gaylord Ice area with ice sculptures and really cold temperatures that we didn’t go to, and you should probably know that it has an extra fee for visiting that area, too. Also, there was an outdoor light display that we didn’t see because of the rain, and because we really didn’t see it until we were driving out, too. Maybe next time.

So while we were slightly underwhelmed at first, we did find more Christmas stuff the more we walked, and we were glad that we stopped by to have a look around.

About the photo:
Each photo is a single RAW exposure, processed in Photoshop. Read more about the photo software and gear I use at the camera gear page.
Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M10
Lens: Olympus 14-42mm IIR