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Wild Hats On Display At Annual Easter Bonnet Parade

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) - Fun, funky and beautiful Easter bonnets were on display in the annual parade along Fifth Avenue.

As CBS 2's Amy Dardashtian reported, the Easter Parade is probably the wackiest and most disorganized among the many parades that New York City hosts.

Hundreds donned their Easter Sunday best for the parade that was more of a meet and greet, WCBS 880's Jim Smith reported.

PHOTOS: 2013 Easter Bonnet Parade

"I love little homemade parades that are not corporate, there's hardly any left. And this parade is awesome because there's no music and there's no floats. All you do is show up in a funny hat," one woman told Smith.

Wild Hats On Display At Annual Easter Bonnet Parade

Bright, colorful and sometimes wacky hats sat atop the heads of adults and children as everyone mingled and checked out the homemade creations.

Easter Bonnet Parade
Easter Bonnet Parade (credit: Jim Smith/WCBS 880)

One man had an empty six-pack of beer on his head, while another lady used marshmallow Peeps to decorate her hat, Smith reported.

Little children made their own designs, Smith reported.

"Five hundred eggs, strung onto a fishing line with a chicken sitting on top," Nola, 10, from Park Slope told Smith of her Easter bonnet.

Wild Hats On Display At Annual Easter Bonnet Parade

One woman had a musical tea-pot on her head. Plenty of people were snapping her photo, 1010 WINS' Glenn Schuck reported.

"Oh it's great, I feel famous!" said the woman.

Easter Bonnet Parade
Easter Bonnet Parade (credit: Jim Smith/WCBS 880)

And CBS 2 spotted everything from a whole table of tea to a frilly flock for a dog.

Participant Oren Caduhada went with a jungle theme – a gorilla, a monkey and a zebra. The Mihollan siblings represented New York, with a big apple and a New York City taxicab, and bacon, on the grounds that, "There's a bacon shop here and i love bacon so much."

Another woman, Autumn, wore a bonnet made of candy.

"I have peeps, jelly beans," she said.

But she emphasized that Easter was about more than just bonnets.

"Easter is basically when God came from the dead," she said.

The parade is all about how creative you can be with a hat, Schuck reported.

"My hat, I wanted to go very modern this year but still keep within a traditional shape. So I have a top hat made entirely out of packing tape," one man said.

A stretch of Fifth Avenue near the cathedral was closed to vehicle traffic to make way for the Easter Parade.

Isabel Margulies and her 4-year-old daughter, Alexia, passed through the cathedral, then stopped by a clown making bunny balloons.

"Easter is: You hide the eggs,'' proclaimed the little girl, whose family is both Christian and Jewish. She also celebrated Passover, which this year overlapped with Easter.

But there was one character that didn't turn up.

"The Easter Bunny," said tourist Stephanie Ahrens. "We would love to see him. We are on the lookout so if we do spot him, we will let you know."

The parade tradition began as a 19th-century gathering of New York's social elite in their Easter best after church services - along with similar parades around the nation that took off after the Civil War. New York's version has become a semi-secular feast.

Irving Berlin wrote a song inspired by it, "Easter Parade,'' which later became the same name of a 1948 film starring Judy Garland and Fred Astaire.

On Sunday, the joyous revelry was mixed with some dissent.

Gay activists stood in front of the cathedral protesting ecclesiastical opposition to same-sex marriage, which was the main issue before the U.S. Supreme Court last week.

New York's archbishop has repeatedly voiced his opposition, once saying same-sex couples are no more entitled to wed than he would be to marry his own mother.

Have you ever attended the Easter parade? Share your comments below...

(TM and © Copyright 2013 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2013 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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