See What EW's Floral Artist Rebecca Motus Created For The Famous Rose Parade.

It's the grand daddy of all parades and the most famous New Year's Day Parade in the world.
700,000 spectators line the five-and-a-half mile parade route in Pasadena, California. Tens of millions of people in over 170 countries watch the telecast every year.
EW's Floral Artist Rebeca Fernandez Motus got hired to conceptualize, design and supervise the finale float by Wells Fargo.
It's a true work marathon and one of the most important floral events in the world.
Now that she has caught up on much needed sleep Rebecca is happy to share the story.

EW: "Rebecca, how did you get hired to work on the Wells Fargo float?"

Rebecca: "The advertising agency that created Wells Fargo’s Tournament of Roses ad reached out to me through one of the vendors that I work with and with whom I have worked internationally in the past."

EW: "What was your role?"

Rebecca: "I conceptualized, designed and executed the whole project. We corresponded via email and had two conference calls. They sent me pictures and told me what they wanted. I loved working with the Wells Fargo Stage Coach experience team because they gave me the artistic freedom to design it the way I wanted to. They wanted to keep it traditional and very impactful because they were at the grand finale and they are a main sponsor. I was able to convince them that my style is modern so I need to modernize the design a little bit to create the impact or the wow factor that they wished to accomplish. I added a lot of flower balls in different sizes, made by my wonderful assistants. I was able to do my color blocking (in a way) and my favorite loops of florals. I am hands on in every aspect of the execution of my design. I did the samples for my designers to copy."

EW: "How much time was involved in the whole project?"

Rebecca: "We were really pressed for time. They reached out to me a few weeks before Thanksgiving and with the holidays and busy holiday season, we literally finalized everything on Christmas week."

EW: "How many people worked on it under your guidance?"

Rebecca: "I had 6 main designers who helped me execute my sketches. I had 10 assistants doing the prep work and mechanics of the job."

EW: "What was the hardest part? "

Rebecca: "The hardest part was working straight with no sleep for 38 hours, I started at 3 am on December 31 and January 1st was just a blur. Another challenge was the constant change of production schedule and we had to travel around the very busy City of Pasadena to meet deadlines. I have to mention the horses!!! They were a challenge to put florals on. I loved the horses. They’re very graceful and delicate at the same time (we were very careful because … who wants to get kicked by a horse? hahaha). There were 22 horses in total. I kept getting squished between horses as we embellished them.  It took a while. We quickly learned that flowers are feed. The horses kept eating away as we installed the floral on them. We kept on pushing their mouths away gently and replenished eaten flowers as we worked.
December 29th, we had to do one stage coach for the press, pictorials and awards ceremony and we only had a window of 1 hour and a half to put it together when it normally takes 6-8 hours to do a stage coach."


EW: "What materials did you use?"

Rebecca: "Here’s another challenge. Seven days before the event, they told me that the flowers should be 85% California grown and I could only use 15% imported flowers. With the time frame I had, it was a hard task to contact local vendors and get the quantities of flowers that I needed. With every product it had to be multiple vendors. The reason for this was that they had a separate event on the 29th of December which was called Equestfest and they were going to be awarded as the certified California grown sponsor of the Rose Parade. I had to tweak my design a little bit in order to comply with the client’s request."

EW: "What will be the best memory from the experience?"

Rebecca: "The moment I saw my work on live TV, it sent chills down my spine. The compliments we got while working on the stage coaches on the street is a good memory, people passing by and saying thank you to us while working all day and all night, some other people handing us hot drinks and water was very heart warming on that chilly day. The people who stayed with me those 38 hours and we greeted each other Happy New Year on the streets - that was a beautiful experience.
The overall reaction of the Wells Fargo Team and the Ad Agency was very welcoming and amazing. They were promoting my company to the other participants of the parade which have actually contacted me (yes, more horses!) They were looking forward to working with me on next year’s Rose Parade and promised that they will be more organized and that everything will be planned by the end of September. I am keeping my fingers crossed."

We are so proud of Rebecca and we knew she would pull it off. She has boundless energy, relentless drive, so much passion for her work and no fear of height. She's the one on top of the ladders to personally install floral at higher points.
Now let's see whether we can get our two Rose Parade alumni to work on the same parade. Ted and Rebecca for Rose Parade 2020.