Christmas in the Park event

I was hired to shoot an annual event in our town this past weekend, Christmas in the Park. It started at 5:15pm with the lighting of the Christmas lights on the trees down the main street boulevard. Immediately after that, there a parade down main street. There were more entrants than expected, probably because the weather was so mild this year. Last year it was -30C and this year it was 0! After the parade there were activities for the rest of the night down in the Lion's Park Campground down in the river valley. People in the town volunteered to come down to the park during the weekends preceding the event to decorate trees with lights and decorations, there were lights up the hiking trail which overlooked the 2000 candle luminary in the design of a sleigh with "2008" underneath. It was quite the site!
I was a little nervous to shoot this event because I had never done an outdoor, NIGHTTIME event before. It is pitch black by 5:20 these days so we are talking NO light outside. I spent the weeks prior to the event studying how best to go about a nighttime outdoor event and it really paid off. I am very happy with the outcome of these pictures, much better than I had hoped. The Town is thrilled with them also.
Here are a few of my favourites:

The Mayor turns on the Christmas lights in the boulevard trees:




Last bits of light in the sky before total darkness sets in:



The people start to gather:




Here comes the parade!



Travel agency float:



Hospital float:



Ski club float:



Here comes Santa(s)



Santa #1



Santa #2 - yes, they had 2 Santa's. Try explaining that to my 5 year old...



Entrance to the campground:



Beautiful display of Christmas trees in the park:



More Christmas trees:







There where sleigh rides:





And rides on "Old Red"







2000 candle luminary of a sleigh:





The candles in the open field where just beautiful: