Grand Floral Parade shines bright in downtown Portland

The sun sure shined

on the

Portland Rose Festival’s

Grand Floral Parade Saturday morning, and the crowds downtown soaked it in, buzzing with energy.

Thousands lined the streets to see what the parade had to offer this year. Families with kids and dogs laid out chairs or blankets while others set up canopies and tents with tables filled with food, ready for the show.

The parade’s return to downtown Portland is another welcome sign of the city center’s continuing recovery.

Amy Harris, 52, has been to the festival every year since she moved back to Portland six years ago. She grew up going to the parade as a kid and saw it as an exciting opportunity to spend the day at the core of the city.

“I think it’s where the parade belongs,” Harris said. “When it was on the east side, the route was great, but there are not the same small businesses over there to frequent like retail and restaurants and stuff. I am really happy to be down here today.”

Just after 10 a.m. — the parade’s official start time — the Rose Festival’s “Clown Prince” officiated the wedding of Jasmine Murphy and David Hakimoglu, the couple chosen by festival officials to experience

the first parade-day marriage ceremony

The family of the bride and groom had reserved seating near a heart-shaped float that served as the backdrop for the couple’s nuptials. Onlookers cheered and confetti filled the air as the two made their way back to a trolley decorated with “just married” signs and flowers.

Leading the parade (in spirit anyway) was the Oregon Zoo’s baby elephant

Tula-Tu

, who was named grand marshal. The float from Alaska Airlines featured a towering depiction of the pachyderm decorated in vibrant hues.

Ava Rathi

, a 2025 graduate of Lincoln High School, served as Queen of Rosaria.

The recently crowned Queen of Rosaria is Ava Rathi of Lincoln High School.

Allison Barr/The Oregonian

The parade featured a variety of floats, marching bands and vintage cars. A diverse range of cultural expressions and dance groups were also on display, including the Panama Folklore, a Seattle group that danced in traditional, colorful Panamanian clothing; Teva Oriata Polynesian Dance Troupe; Orgullo Morelense Cemaic, which performed dances common at Mexican carnivals as far back as the 1870s; and the Vietnamese Community of Oregon, which showcased traditional Vietnamese dancing.

Attendees also saw familiar faces such as Mayor Keith Wilson, Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson and 2025 Oregon Teacher of the Year Bryan Butcher Jr., who all rode in Portland Rose Society cars.

Papalotl Ballet, a traditional Mexican folklore dance troupe, marched in the Grand Floral Parade on Saturday, June 7, 2025.

Allison Barr/The Oregonian

There were often pauses during the parade so MAX trains or buses could pass through, resulting in some lulls that gave the crowd more time to interact with people in the parade and take in the floats and other entertainment.

Attendees would go up and take pictures with featured horses, the Rose Festival Court would get off their floats and give flowers to little girls, and bands and dancers would perform for a little bit longer to energize the crowd.

Emily Hastings, 33, has been coming to the parade almost every year since she was a baby. She notes that there have been significant changes over the last few years. The amount of floats featured in the parade have decreased, and the route is shorter. Yet, Hastings was eager to see the tradition continue and said she hoped future generations would get to enjoy it as well.

As a member of the Portland Rose Society, she was especially looking forward to seeing the dignitaries.

“It’s fun watching how the kids interact with the parade and how the different generations come through,” Hastings said.

Katie and TJ Tran, a young couple from Fargo, South Dakota, said they planned their trip to Oregon around the parade. For them, seeing the flowers on the floats and soaking in the greenery downtown was the highlight of the morning.

“When I started researching Oregon, the Rose Festival came up, so we planned our trip around it,” Tran said. “I really like all the plants.”

Ahead of the parade, business owners and employees expressed optimism about the parade’s return to downtown after a post-pandemic hiatus that kept the parade on the city’s east side for three years.

Foot traffic in downtown Portland inched higher in 2024. But the number of people who lived, visited or worked downtown remained 36% lower last year compared with 2019, as The Oregonian/OregonLive reported earlier this year.

Gov. Tina Kotek has pledged to help boost those numbers to pre-pandemic levels by 2030.

Marcus Nettles, co-owner of Drip Drop Coffee on Southwest Fourth Avenue, is all for it.

“I think that it’s going to be good for us,” the 44-year-old said Thursday. “More people who aren’t typically downtown will probably be down here looking at the parade. Maybe they’ll see our spot, and then maybe they’ll love it and come back. So that’s great.”

Joseph Loftgren, manager at The Independent Sports Bar & Grill on Southwest Broadway, wasn’t so sure. During the

Starlight Parade

last week, customers seemed to fit the “one and done” category, he said in an interview ahead of Saturday’s main event.

But he also saw the upside. “I think bringing any sort of amount of people down here is good not just for business but for the business environment as a whole,” Loftgren, 29, said.

He was also expecting a crowd of electricians at the restaurant after the parade, members of a guild who planned to march first and eat later.

Florist Kelley Birkinbine of Bentley Fleurs, also on Southwest Broadway, said she was commissioned to make Queen Ava’s coronation bouquet, and she was excited for what the parade had inspired.

“We are the City of Roses,” she said, “so having it go through the heart of downtown just seems right and good and proper.”

—Kimberly Cortez covers breaking news, public safety and more for The Oregonian/OregonLive. She can be reached at

kcortez@oregonian.com