As we moseyed around the dazzling displays, we heard an announcement that a movie would soon be showing in the program center. I got even more excited after we got inside the store and I learned the Bronner’s story. My attitude moved to very positive after we visited the Silent Night Chapel that the Bronner family has built on the grounds. To me it was simply a giant Christmas store. However, I must confess that I wasn’t super excited about it because I didn’t know the story behind it. Our children and I visited Bronner’s CHRISTmas Wonderland when we were in Frankenmuth in 19, so I definitely wanted to take Ray to see it. Billboards from Florida to Michigan advertise it as the world’s largest Christmas store. After more expansions, it now covers 2.2 acres (the area of 1.7 football fields). They built the giant Bronner’s CHRISTmas Wonderland. In 1977 the Bronners moved to a 45-acre site on the edge of town. Their stores in downtown Frankenmuth were so popular that people stood in line just to go inside to shop. They began to sell to individuals and families. Wally and Irene’s Christmas business grew and grew. By the time they moved into their own sign shop, half of it was dedicated to a variety of signs and half of it to Christmas decorations.
By then other towns and businesses were hiring Wally to create their Christmas decorations. By 1954 he and Irene were ready to build their first building. An early outdoor Christmas decoration that Wally Bronner painted in 1951.įor the first few years, Wally continued to work out of his parents’ basement. Wally Bronner’s first outdoor, hand-painted Nativity scene, 1945. In 1951 he created Christmas signs for Frankenmuth lampposts. Local merchants also asked him to design window displays for their stores. Wally officially began a sign painting business when he graduated from high school.
WALLY WONDERLAND HOW TO
The experience taught him about how to treat customers. He liked the idea that people would pay him to do something he liked to do anyway. As a teenager, Wally also worked in his aunt’s general store.
By the time he was sixteen years old, he was painting signs in his parents’ basement. Wally Bronner was a descendant of those first German settlers who founded Frankenmuth in 1845.
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