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'The most DIY you could imagine': Volunteers help decorate Rose Parade float
Where the Sierra Madre Rose Parade float is constructed throughout the year.
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The Rose Parade kicks off New Years Day, when 39 colorful and intricately designed floats will glide down Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. And an army of volunteers is helping to decorate those floats in the final days before the parade.
In a warehouse in the small city of Sierra Madre in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, JoAnn Copp gently places green mums on a large sign that reads “Fiesta.”
“You want to get it on there without scrunching it too badly,” Copp said.
Copp lives in Costa Mesa, but has volunteered to decorate Sierra Madre’s Rose Parade float since 2011.
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JoAnn Copp places mums on the Fiesta sign that will adorn the Sierra Madre Rose Parade Float.
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Mums for the Sierra Madre Rose Parade float.
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“ I just happen to like the camaraderie and creativity and everybody working together,” she said.
Next to her, Sierra Madre resident Corinne Flores puts the finishing touches on a piñata for the float — Sierra Madre’s theme this year is “fiesta at abuela’s house.” The Grammy-winning Mariachi Divas will perform on it and 16 folklórico dancers will flank the float.
”What I love about it is working with the other people that are here and getting to know some of the people both in Sierra Madre and folks that have come from really far, like one lady that came from North Carolina just to work on the float,” Flores said.
Corinne Flores puts the finishing touches on a piñata .
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Many of the volunteers came from afar to experience a part of the storied Rose Parade. Marty Antonellis splits time between Boston and New Orleans — her family of nine came from all over the country to work on Sierra Madre’s float.
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“From New Orleans, Boston, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh…. I think I’ve covered them all,” she said with a chuckle. “It's just amazing because everyone wants to go to the Rose Parade at some point in their life.”
The whole family is planning to attend the parade, where Antonellis said they’ll cheer on the Sierra Madre Rose float that they all had a hand in creating.
Marty Antonellis fluffs carnations for Sierra Madre's Rose Parade Float.
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Fluffing carnations.
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A DIY effort
For Pasadena resident Diana Becker and her mother Eileen, who lives in Mobile, Alabama, volunteering together to decorate Sierra Madre’s float has been a holiday season tradition since 2012.
“ I come out to visit [Diana] at Christmas time and then we do the float,” said Eileen. “[Sierra Madre] is a wonderful place to do the float — it’s self-built, that’s the main thing, and everybody gets to know everybody and we get to text each other sometimes during the year.”
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Diana Becker and her mother, Eileen, volunteer every year to help decorate Sierra Madre's Rose Parade float.
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Sierra Madre’s float is one of only six that are “self-built,” or made independently. Burbank, Downey, La Cañada-Flintridge, South Pasadena and Cal Poly also fully build their own floats.
“We are absolutely the most DIY you could possibly imagine,” said Sierra Madre’s volunteer coordinator Hannah Jungbauer. “We want this to be as community driven as possible.”
The in-progress Sierra Madre Rose Parade Float on Dec. 30, 2024.
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A detail of a cat stretching that will appear on Sierra Madre's Rose Parade float.
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The Sierra Madre Rose Float Association, a nonprofit and all-volunteer organization, hosts Drag Queen Bingo twice a year to raise money for the float, which cost about $52,000 this year. Corporate floats, on the other hand, often cost at least $275,000 to build.
To cut costs, they use donated Christmas trees and succulents to decorate the float. They’ve used the same chassis since the 1980s. And after the parade, they sell as much from the float as they can — that’s why you may spot pieces of floats from past years decorating some Sierra Madre homes, such as a 10-foot tiki head in a yard from the 2020 float, or a cartoonish bear cub peering down from a tree, from the 2023 float.
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Pieces of donated Christmas trees that will be a part of Sierra Madre's Rose Parade float.
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The other remaining floats you see along the parade route are built by two companies — Phoenix Decoration Co. out of Irwindale and Artistic Entertainment Services in Azusa. Award-winning float builder Fiesta Parade Floats is no longer a part of the parade after nearly a four-decade run.
The Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association cut ties with the company in June citing the company’s failure to meet technical and financial criteria. Fiesta Parade Floats has since shut down. Phoenix Decoration Co. is now overseeing the Kaiser Permanente float instead of Fiesta along with 16 other floats. Artistic Entertainment Services told LAist, it’s now overseeing a few of the former Fiesta customers as part of their 16 floats.
A bear cub from the 2023 Sierra Madre Rose Parade float on a tree outside a house in the canyon neighborhood of Sierra Madre.
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A brief history of the Rose Parade
The first Tournament of Roses Parade was held back in 1890 and it was extremely quaint compared to today’s world-renowned affair. It was originally the idea of a small group of country clubbers in Pasadena, who wanted to promote the place they called “the Mediterranean of the West."
The concept design for Sierra Madre's Rose Parade float.
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The group of men who made up the original social club invited East Coasters to a mid-winter holiday festival, where they could escape the cold and watch chariot races, jousting and other games under the warmth of the California winter sun. In 1913, the event featured a race between a camel and an elephant (the elephant won).
Sierra Madre is one of the oldest participants in the parade — the city entered its very first float in 1917. Keeping their float self-built, according to the city’s float association, is one way they continue to honor that local tradition.
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