My Christmas tree is dying!!

So it's still a few days till Christmas and our Christmas tree is wilting and losing pine needles by the dozens!! Poor thing. I did some research and realized we were supposed to cute about 1 inch of the bottom of the trunk off so that it would have a clean fresh area from which to absorb water, well we didn't do that and the water in the tree holder has been full for several days now, so obviously the poor tree was not able to get any water. So I got creative and enlisted the help of my reluctant husband who while I held up the tree(ornaments, lights and all) he sawed off some of the trunk so that hopefully our poor tree will be able to get some water and perk up a little bit. It wasn't pretty to say the least though, ornaments were falling off and TONS of pine needles were shed, BUT I was able to put back the ornaments and it almost looks as good as it did before. Next year I know to cut some off the bottom of the trunk before we put it in water.