By the time the first marching band steps onto Colorado Boulevard on New Year’s morning, the Rose Parade will appear effortless: towering floats gliding past grandstands, every surface densely packed with flowers and seeds, every detail fixed in place. What the audience will not see is the three-day sprint beforehand, when that polish is achieved under fluorescent lights at Rosemont Pavilion.
That sprint is known as Decorating Places, a public float-viewing and working event held December 28 through 30, when professional float builders and trained volunteers apply the final floral materials to parade entries just days before their debut. With timed tickets sold through Sharp Seating and free parking nearby, the event has become both a behind-the-scenes attraction and a practical planning item for visitors navigating one of Pasadena’s busiest weeks.
Decorating Places is organized by the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association and serves as the final stage of preparation for the 137th Rose Parade. Inside the pavilion, floats that have taken months to design and engineer are finished almost entirely by hand, with flowers, bark, grasses, seeds and fruits affixed one by one in carefully coordinated patterns.
The setting is industrial and unsentimental. Rosemont Pavilion, a utilitarian structure near the Arroyo Seco, offers no pageantry of its own. Instead, it provides space—wide aisles, high ceilings, long worktables—where teams move methodically around floats that are still incomplete, their themes visible but unresolved. Volunteers work in shifts, often repeating the same motion hundreds of times, while professional decorators oversee color consistency, material placement and structural integrity.
This year’s Decorating Places unfolds under the leadership of Mark Leavens, the Tournament’s president for the 2026 parade cycle. His chosen theme, “The Magic in Teamwork,” is less a slogan here than an operational reality. No float is completed by a single group; each depends on the synchronized effort of designers, engineers, materials specialists and volunteers following a shared plan.
For the public, the appeal is access. Unlike parade day, when floats pass in seconds, Decorating Places allows visitors to linger, studying textures up close and watching designs take shape in real time. It is one of the few moments when the scale and labor of the Rose Parade are fully visible.
As Pasadena fills with visitors in the days between Christmas and New Year’s, Decorating Places occupies a particular niche on the Rose Parade calendar. It is neither rehearsal nor performance, neither secret nor spectacle. Instead, it is the working heart of the parade—where preparation gives way to inevitability, and where the city’s most elaborate tradition is finished quietly, just before it becomes public again.
Decorating Places will be held Sunday through Tuesday, December 28–30, at the Rosemont Pavilion, 700 Seco Street, Pasadena, where Rose Parade floats receive their final decorations in the days before New Year’s Day. Daily viewing sessions run during daytime hours, beginning as early as 9 a.m., with staggered entry times across the three days. Tickets are sold in advance through Sharp Seating at approximately $21.50 per person; children five and under are admitted free. Free parking is available on a first-come, first-served basis in lots near the Rosemont Pavilion and the Jackie Robinson Baseball Field. For more information, visit tournamentofroses.com or call the Tournament of Roses at (626) 449-4100.
