Galaxy of Lights opens Friday, and its 30th anniversary edition is set to be one for the history books.
Why it matters: The extensive holiday light show is the Huntsville Botanical Garden’s marquee fundraiser, drawing more than 80,000 visitors annually.
Zoom in: Planning the event is a year-round process, starting in January with a design debrief on the previous year’s show, Steven Byrd told Axios Huntsville.
- Byrd, light engineer and design manager, has spent a little more than a decade working on Galaxy: six years on staff and four as a volunteer.
- Design ideas take shape in the spring and are finalized around June or July. Workers start building the displays in August.
What they’re saying: “We store everything here, we build everything here, and we engineer everything here,” Byrd said, of the roughly nine staffers and 20-plus volunteer team. Hundreds of volunteers help run the event nights…