The 2018 National Cherry Blossom Festival, which officially comes to a close on Sunday, presented four weeks of free and ticketed events in Washington and the surrounding region that celebrated the start of spring and the 106th anniversary of Tokyo gifting cherry blossom trees to the city.
Opening ceremony and fund-raising events, destination marketing company activations, and themed pop-up bars and art exhibits all contributed to the annual celebration with design and decor, entertainment, and activity ideas inspired by the Japanese flower.
Here's a look at some of the most eye-catching ideas from official and adjacent festival events this year.
Drink Company, the company behind Washington’s Instagram-friendly pop-up bars Miracle on Seventh Street and the Game of Thrones Pop-Up Bar, brought back its Japanese culture-theme bar for a second year. Drink Company partnered with the National Cherry Blossom Festival for the pop-up, which serves thematic cocktails in eye-popping rooms inspired by cherry blossoms, Tokyo streets, and Japanese pop culture. The design of each room was led by Drink Company’s special projects leaders Matt Fox and Adriana Aspiazu. The bar features a canopy of around 90,000 cherry blossoms, which is five times more blossoms than the bar had last year. The pop-up debuted March 1 and is open through April 29 at 1841 Seventh Street NW.
The festival’s opening ceremony took place March 25 at the Warner Theatre. Placed on seats in the theater were LED bracelets sponsored by the Japan National Tourism Organization. The bracelets were set to synchronize with parts of the show—as music played, the bracelets lit up in unison. The ceremony was produced by the festival along with event planning company the Webster Group.
The ceremony featured performances by musicians including piano player Akiko Yano. The stage was lit in purple and featured giant cherry blossom cutouts. EventEQ handled the event’s audiovisual elements and stage design.
The Shodo Girls from the Fukuoka Prefectural Yahata Chuo High School performed live calligraphy that involved painting strokes on a large sheet of paper.
The festival’s annual Pink Tie Party fund-raiser, sponsored by ANA airlines, took place March 15 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. Design Foundry designed the event, which featured cherry blossom projections on the ceiling of the venue’s atrium.
The main floor of the event had a bar wrapped with paintings of cherry blossoms on a blue sky.
Sponsors of the event had their own tables, which were decorated with hanging cherry blossoms and lanterns.
A bar sponsored by event host Trade Center Management Associates featured colorful, vibrant illustrations and served sparking wine and cherry brandy.
An installation on the steps of the venue showcased cascading rows of umbrellas, which were placed in front of a painting of cherry blossoms in front of the Jefferson Memorial.
The center bar combines the architectural elements of pagodas and tea houses and is decorated with paper cranes and lucky cats.
A garden room decorated with boxwood, a variety of florals, and 1,300 monarch butterflies pays tribute to Washington in spring bloom.
A room inspired by Japanese pop culture features a 10-foot-tall Godzilla robot that was built by Andrew Herndon. The robot stands in front of a mural of the monster’s destroyed city, painted by Andew Funk. The installation also features Mothra, which is Gozilla’s nemesis.
One room in the bar is inspired by Tokyo’s Memory Lane—an alley that has dozens of bars, bright lights, and late night street food—and features signs and lanterns with Japanese writing, and a spray painted mural that depicts the alley.
Maggie O’Neill, a Washington-based designer and official National Cherry Blossom Festival artist, debuted her cherry blossom-theme pop-up exhibit March 30. The exhibit, open every Saturday and Sunday at 1643 Connecticut Avenue NW through April 15, features the #FinesInFullBloom installation created from parking tickets. The installation pokes fun at the pink parking ticket that local drivers can receive with a floor-to-ceiling, origami-inspired blossoming structure. The exhibit also features 12 of O’Neill’s pop impressionistic-style paintings, 40 works on paper created specifically for the festival, and cherry blossom-theme merchandise.
Washington’s destination marketing organization hosted a spring-theme consumer event at Grand Central Terminal in New York March 8. The event had a giant mural created by the organization’s team, which invited passersby to color in a drawing of the city with giant crayons.
Guests could pose as the statue of President Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial, in a chair designed by Hargrove.
