Belle, the brave bookworm at the heart of Beauty and the Beast, is my favorite Disney princess. While I tend to gravitate more toward representations of her in her peasant dress, when I saw the 2011 Hallmark ornament The Enchanted Rose, in which she wears the elegant golden ball gown featured in the iconic scene accompanying the title song, I couldn’t resist snagging it.

This ornament, about two inches wide at the bottom and standing just over three inches tall, shows Belle gazing curiously at the rose that the Beast keeps under a glass dome in the west wing. It’s a little odd in that it doesn’t exactly capture a moment in the movie. It’s more a mash-up of two moments. While Belle is within proximity to the enchanted rose immediately after her idyllic dinner and dance with the cursed prince, her focus is on the mirror and she barely gives the drooping flower a passing glance. Hence, although her costume is from the latter part of the movie, this hearkens back more to her first night in the castle when her inquisitiveness got the better of her and she tiptoed up to the forbidden room to investigate its contents.

Despite that incongruity, I really like this ornament designed by ornament artist Katrina Bricker, and I’m not the only one. I bought it along with several ornaments that I lined them up on the shelf for my parents and brother to look at, and Nathan’s eyes immediately fell upon Belle. While he liked the others, he couldn’t stop looking at this Disney heroine. “It’s just so pretty,” he said.

Belle certainly looks elegant in her golden gown, which is accented by glitter, mostly on the shoulders and the looping bits of fabric about midway down the skirt. Of course, there’s no actual fabric here; it’s just plastic. But it’s a very nice replica of that dress, with the slender gloves to match. She presses one hand against herself just below the neck, while the other is poised to remove the glass covering on the rose. So close they practically brush against the clear plastic, her gloved fingers practically seem to tingle with a sense of mystery.

The rose we see here is hunched over, with the front facing away from Belle. Although it hangs down on the bright green stem, it is in full bloom without any sign of wilting. Belle’s heart-shaped face is slightly cocked under her brown hair, and there seems to be a direct line between Belle’s chocolate eyes and the majestic rose, which rests upon a white pedestal with a flat green surface on top. She is standing so close to it that her dress enfolds half of the pedestal at the base.

It’ll be another several weeks before we pick out a tree to put in our living room, so I haven’t been able to test Belle’s hanging ability on an actual branch, but I tried dangling her from a basket handle, which seemed to work well and didn’t seem to result in any tilting. The small golden loop in her hair is well placed for hooks. Still, I’m undecided as to whether I will hang this on the tree; while I think it would look very nice against those dark green needles, the flat bottom makes it ideally suited to placement on a shelf. I might just decide to leave this one on elsewhere in the room.

This is not a magic ornament, and because Hallmark has so many of those now, I get a bit spoiled and can’t help craving those elements a bit when they are absent. Still, I can’t really think of anything that the Enchanted Rose should have incorporated, and because it isn’t “magical,” the price is more manageable. If you too were swept up in the enchantment of Beauty and the Beast, it shouldn’t be hard to see the beauty of this ornament.

This review is a part of the All Things Disney Write-Off and my 'Tis the Season Write-Off.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 14.95