Behind-the-Scenes at the Flower Parade...

After watching the Bloemencorso (Flower Parade) for so many years, I was thrilled to finally have my first chance to see the floats being made thanks to the BSN Family Association organizing a tour. Strangely enough, the building used to build the floats is actually a massive indoor tennis club in Noordwijk. Our tour guide did a great job explaining the entire process.

Each float is built by a team of volunteers from a variety of clubs in the vicinity of the bulb fields. The interior of the float is typically built of a steel frame covered in roofing insulation (essentially like Styrofoam) in which to stick in the flowers. It was typical to have conceptional drawings next to the float; this one was for a float sponsored by a bakery.

There were hundreds of volunteers scattered all around the building. While many worked on decorating the floats, others prepped the flowers with a metal pin which would then be pushed into the insulation.

Rather than sweaty athletes, the enormous space was filled with buckets of fragrant flowers.

In addition to the 20 floats, 30 cars were decorated.

It was intriguing to see how these flower segments were used to build signs; it reminded me of Lite-Brite, a toy from my childhood.

Although I took over 200 photos that day, rather than posting photos of the floats at this point, I’ll combine the photos of the floats in progress with the finished floats that I saw two days later at the Flower Parade.