i'm really picky about trees. i just did ours yesterday and it's very simple, red, white and silver, my mom wanted me to stick on these horribly ugly bright colored balls with gold stamped sparkle patterns and i was like you're out of your fucking mind. it needs a few more balls but we ran out of plain ones. i never put out her sentimental ornaments anymore, except for a few from radio city that i think are tasteful. this is our tree and i hate the topper but our angel broke and we can never agree on anything so a plain star was our only option. however, my best friend and her family have a HUGE tree that they have sentimental ornaments on but all the ornaments follow a theme and i think its really gorgeous except when her dog tries to eat them lmao
i think it depends on the tree, sometimes "tacky" doesn't actually look tacky.