ST. MARTIN PARISH — The Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival is just weeks away, and preparations for the highly anticipated event are well underway. As the heart of festival season unfolds in Louisiana, the city of Breaux Bridge is preparing to welcome thousands for its annual celebration of culture, music, and crawfish.
“Well this is the nerve wracking part cause you’re ready to go but it’s not quite time to start, you can’t wait actually for those three weeks to put your pieces together and as I’ve said all the pieces have been falling in place throughout the year,” said Mark Benard, president of the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival Board.
Benard confirmed that organizers have completed the process of booking bands and lining up vendors ahead of the three-day event, which is set to kick off on May 2.
“Now we’re on the back side of all that where now we’re about a week and a half out of beginning to actually bring the things here and start setting up in the par and bringing the ticket booths and etcetera ya know, it’s a huge puzzle that takes all year to put together,” Benard said.
Planning for this year’s festival began shortly after last year’s event wrapped up, and so far, organizers say everything is on track.
“Actually as of yesterday evening we were slightly off but after working together with our volunteers we pretty much caught it back up so I’m confident at where we are at this point,” Benard noted.
In preparation for the influx of attendees, Benard said he placed a strong focus on safety improvements for this year’s festivities.
“We want the public to know we have a clear bag policy, we also improved our security, we felt we had a good team but we improved it and we added additional people, the main thing we want is to be safe for all the people that come,” he said.
Organizers expect large crowds to flock to Breaux Bridge to enjoy the festival’s signature lineup of live music, local food, and, of course, crawfish — a true South Louisiana tradition.
