5′ Balloon Snowmen are Hit of the Christmas Parade

Oh what fun it is to make a Christmas float that has 5′ balloon snowmen on it!

Rachel rebuilding Frosty


The City of Knoxville’s theme for this year’s Christmas parade focused on snowmen and Christmas trees. Not only was it our delight to create this float, we heard screams of delight along the parade route from onlookers. When I watched the video playback on WBIR’s website, the announcer even said, “Look that entire float is made from balloons. It’s my favorite float so far.” (My guess it was her favorite float still by

the parade’s end, but I’m prejudiced.)

My fantastic crew prebuilt ten fully decorated Christmas trees at the design studio as well as the four 5′ snowmen who sat on each corner of the float. We then trucked in the decor and installed it on the City’s float which sat atop the Civic Coliseum garage on a not-so-cold but blustery afternoon. On site, we installed

Sister Frosty

Christmas lights on each tree and added snow to the float.

Most of the afternoon’s decorating went fairly smoothly–well, except that as we traveled to the Coliseum someone (that’s me) turned a corner too quickly which caused two of our 5′ snowmen to pop. Being the amazing crew member that she is, Rachel just climbed in the truck and restructured the snowmen’s bodies again.

Mrs. Frosty


As evening approached and skies grew bright orange as the sunset, we turned on the lights, double rigged the snowmen down and headed off onto the parade route. For me, the best part of the float design was that the snowmen actually bobbled as the float rolled slowly down the streets. The wind had died down some, but we hit some cross-winds just before the main route that actually spun one of the snowmen’s head all the way around. I jumped out of the truck cab, turned it back around and off we went with the snowmen, just bobbling about on the float. The City Councilmen and women joyfully waved at onlookers to their delight.

At the end of parade it’s always hectic as we have to disassemble the entire float in about 15 minutes because the float company has to leave immediately for a parade in North Carolina. This year we added speed because Kelly and I had tickets to see Fiddler on the Roof that was starting in about 30 minutes after we got to the parade’s end. With lightning speed, we stripped the float of its festive sculptures and off we headed to enjoy the play. All in all it was a very fun day and one that made our clients happy–that’s all we want!

Little Brother Frosty

Frosty