LOVE holiday chat!
We visited Lapland with Santa's Lapland Dec 2016. It was thee most magical most special holiday so far. It's not cheap, and I really struggled when it came to booking it to actually hit that button with the amount it was costing, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat. We'd try Thomson Thomas cook etc who had worked out roughly a thousand cheaper, but it included only 2 minute tasters of activities and the cost to add those one seperately were usually £100 each, even looking independently. Also the meeting with Santa were to be group meetings with them, at hotels! I felt we could do that here! With Santa's Lapland we were taken to the artic circle centre and amongst so many other activities we took a snowmobile pulled sleight over a frozen lake through a forest to meet some elves who then took us to the only cabin you could see and Santa was inside, Truly magical. Santa had our kids letters they'd sent off earlier in the year and knew their names. From the moment you land in the airport to the moment you leave, it's amazing!
I wouldn't recommend DIY unless you already had the snow kit for everyone, just buying merino wool basic layers hat and spare gloves we were almost £400 on top of that youd have top of the range snowboots and Snows unit to be, we were also advised that what we can buy here in the uk isn't as good as what they suppl, whether that's a con to get you to book who knows.