The Gulf Shores City Council voted Monday to approve a new Saturday Mardi Gras parade organized by the newly formed Pleasure Island Revelers Mardi Gras Krewe, but the decision came with an unexpected twist that eased tensions in the room: the city’s traditional Fat Tuesday parade may not be going away after all.
At the start of the meeting, Mayor Robert Craft told attendees the choice between a Fat Tuesday parade and a Saturday parade may not have to be either-or. Craft said he is open to the city working with whatever group takes over the Fat Tuesday parade for one more year, before fully handing the event over to that group in 2028. He was careful to note he was not speaking on behalf of the rest of the council, and additional public meetings are expected before any formal vote on that arrangement.
The City of Gulf Shores has organized the annual Mardi Gras parade for the past decade, with participation and attendance fluctuating over the years and the route shifting at times between Highway 59 and the Beach Highway. This year’s parade had been set to return to Highway 59, a move that had already generated interest from the local business community before the Pleasure Island Revelers approached the city about taking over organization of the event and shifting it to a Saturday.
City officials say handing the parade to a dedicated krewe would relieve Gulf Shores of much of the planning, liability and logistical burden that comes with running a large public event. Municipal parades require permits, insurance, barricades, security contracts and months of coordination between city departments — work that krewe-run events absorb through their own volunteer structures.
Residents arrive ready to object — and find common ground
For many residents who arrived at Monday’s meeting prepared to push back against changing the parade date, learning that the Fat Tuesday tradition remained on the table changed the tone considerably. Gulf Shores’ Fat Tuesday parade has been a fixture of the winter calendar, and several speakers treated any threat to it as a question about the city’s identity rather than a scheduling detail.
Rebecca Drouillard, president of the Sirens of the Sea krewe, said she left the meeting feeling reassured. “I feel a little better because they’re entertaining the thought of keeping it this year the way it is and then our krewes coming together and working out something for the following year,” Drouillard said.
Blake Rowell, president of the Pleasure Island Revelers, said moving to a Saturday would give parade-goers more breathing room, since Gulf Shores’ parade has traditionally started around 10 a.m. the same day Orange Beach’s parade kicks off at 2 p.m. “Right now, I think we’re kind of pinched between the 10 a.m. start in Gulf Shores and the 2 p.m. start in Orange Beach and a lot of people have to make a choice,” Rowell said. “We’re trying to eliminate that choice, where you can go and enjoy a full-on Gulf Shores parade. You can spend the day there. You’re not rushed out to go get in traffic and get to Orange Beach.”
Grant Brown, with the City of Gulf Shores, said the city remains willing to support a separate Fat Tuesday parade if a group steps forward to organize one. “If there’s a group that once again wants to start a Tuesday morning Fat Tuesday parade, we would be willing to talk to them about supporting their parade,” Brown said. “The whole idea about returning the parade back to Mardi Gras associations and the local krewe I think is really a good position for the city to be in.”
The new Saturday parade, organized by the Pleasure Island Revelers, will run from 15th Street south on Highway 59 to the Beach Highway. The route follows the main tourism corridor that funnels visitors through Gulf Shores, putting floats within walking distance of the shops, restaurants and lodging that line the highway through the heart of town.
Mardi Gras remains one of the busiest tourism draws along the Alabama Gulf Coast each winter, bringing visitors and locals alike to Baldwin County’s beach communities for parades, floats and family celebrations. The season extends a Gulf Coast tradition with deep roots — Mobile claims the oldest Mardi Gras celebration in the United States — and coastal Alabama’s beach towns have spent recent decades building their own winter take on it, timed to fill hotels and restaurants in what would otherwise be a quiet stretch between holidays and spring break.
Additional council meetings are expected in the coming months before a final vote on the future of the Fat Tuesday parade.
A date on next year’s calendar
The council has since formalized that arrangement, approving Resolution 7161, a memorandum of understanding between the city and the Pleasure Island Revelers Mardi Gras crew. Under the agreement, the krewe will organize and run the new Saturday parade on January 23, giving the celebration an official date on next year’s calendar even as the city and local krewes continue working out the long-term future of the Tuesday parade.
The memorandum fixes the city’s role in support rather than management, marking the shift city officials have described all along: Gulf Shores remains a partner on safety and logistics, while the programming — throws, floats, bands, krewe staging — belongs to the organization whose name is now on the event.
Unanimous approval — and an effort to save Fat Tuesday
Update (Aug. 1, 2026): The Gulf Shores City Council’s approval of the new Saturday parade was unanimous, and the city has confirmed it will provide the same safety and security support — including barricades and police presence — for both the new Saturday parade and any future Fat Tuesday parade.
Mike Hawkins, a representative of the Shriners, has offered to help organize a new group to keep the Fat Tuesday morning parade going, and Mayor Robert Craft said the community will have about a year to form that organizing group. The update also sheds light on the parade’s more recent history: Gulf Shores has run the Fat Tuesday parade for roughly a decade, previously shifting its route and briefly pausing the event following a 2017 accident in which band members were injured.
The competing parades frame a familiar question for a resort city: how to grow an event without losing the character that made it popular. A Saturday date promises bigger crowds and longer stays, since families can build a weekend around it. A Tuesday morning parade, by contrast, belongs to locals — school-age bands, residents with the day off, and the regulars who claim the same stretch of curbside every year.
For the krewes, the stakes are practical as much as sentimental. Gulf Shores’ traditional 10 a.m. Fat Tuesday start sits squarely between the weekend and Orange Beach’s 2 p.m. parade, forcing visitors to choose and forcing krewe members to rush from one event to the next. A Saturday parade untangles that knot and, in the Revelers’ argument, lets each city have a full parade day of its own.
The city’s decade of direct involvement was itself an unusual arrangement. Most Gulf Coast parades are organized by private krewes that fund their own floats and assume their own risk, with municipal governments handling permits and policing. Gulf Shores stepped in to run its parade directly, and the Resolution 7161 agreement effectively returns the event to the model that prevails everywhere else on the coast — the city provides the safety net, and a krewe provides the show.
Whether Fat Tuesday survives in Gulf Shores now depends on the organizing effort Hawkins has volunteered to lead. A year is enough time to form a krewe, recruit float builders and prove to the council that a Tuesday tradition has a constituency willing to carry it — and the council’s door, by Brown’s account, remains open. The Shriners have deep experience running Gulf Coast parades, and Hawkins’ involvement gives the effort an organizer with both the logistics background and the standing in the community to pull it together.
City leaders have framed the arrangement as a test: if a Saturday krewe parade succeeds in drawing crowds that spill into the whole weekend, and if a reorganized Fat Tuesday group proves self-sustaining, Gulf Shores ends up with two celebration days and a lighter municipal footprint in both. If not, the council will face the decision it deferred Monday with better information about what residents actually attend and support.
For now, the calendar holds both possibilities: a Saturday parade on January 23 with a new krewe’s name on it, and a Fat Tuesday morning tradition that may yet survive on volunteer shoulders. Residents who filled the council chamber expecting to lose one or the other left, instead, with a promise that the city will keep both on the table.