Cookeville Forms Committee For Christmas Parade

The City of Cookeville has formed a parade committee to plan this year’s Christmas parade which is set for December 14th.

Cookeville Mayor Laurin Wheaton said members of leisure services, public works, the fire and police departments, will join community members to put the parade together. Wheaton said the city is planning the parade so the parade could include schools and other government entities.

“When it looked like there wasn’t going to be one we as a city came together and said we will attempt to make this work,” Wheaton said. “And so I think it is going to happen, again lots of moving parts still but we are all trying to come together to make a Christmas parade for our community.”

Wheaton said the parade committee has a lot of work ahead of them. Wheaton said the committee is learning how to put a parade together as they go.

“We are finalizing the application process,” Wheaton said. “We are working on when we are going to have meetings for the parade participants and figuring out just how to really do logistics like staging and how to line everybody up.”

Wheaton said the city will post further announcements about participant meetings and logistics on the city’s Facebook page within the next few days.

Wheaton said this is the city’s first time arranging a Christmas parade. Wheaton said planning the parade has been challenging and is like flying a plane while building it.

“I know that our city and our directors and our teams are more than capable of doing this,” Wheaton said. “I don’t have any doubts that this can be done by our city. This is something new that we have never done but I have full confidence in everyone on the committee and our staff on being able to do this so I think we can get it done.”