Parade Day!

 

Well....after two and a half months of meeting, planning, building, painting, and decorating our float, today was the big day! The day of the Glendale Hometown Christmas Parade.

It was a sleepless night for a couple of the men, and an early, cold morning for the rest of us- but we managed to pull it off.

Since the float was too big to drive down the street as is, a lot of the assembly had to be done near the parade site. The owners of Pratt's Pet Store let us use their lot, which was just a block or so away from the start of the parade route.

 

Here's a shot of the front, along with the amazing donkey.

 

This side was staged as a marketplace.

 

 

 

Is there room in your Inn? The theme for our float.

 

And the back had a final message........"Let Him Inn".

 

It was a bit tricky pulling it into the street, we scraped the back end a bit, and held up traffic on Glendale Avenue..

 

Two of these huge signs were hung on either side of the pull vehicle, held up by an ingenious PVC structure.

 

A close up of the donkey.

 

Mary

 

Joseph

 

The Inn Keeper

 

On the parade route!

 

A quick dash across the street to get a pic of the other side.

 

 

I love this shot...it really shows the enormity of the float, and the signs on the pull vehicle.

We had a speaker system with live narration and music mounted to the top of the suburban.

 

We made it!

After the parade it was time to start the tear down,

.........but not before a few pictures.

There were a few more people that contributed to the float by gathering and donating materials, helping in our brainstorming meetings, and of course, our actors, narrator, and driver. But those in these photos really put in the sweat equity.

It was a big group effort.

No more room in this Inn!

I won't lie.....it was a lot of work, and there were many that put in so much more time than me. But overall, it was a great learning experience, and really amazing seeing it all come together in the end.

 

Now.....where in the world are we going to store it?????