Editor's note: This version was changed on Dec. 5 at 3 p.m. to reflect postponement of the event to 5 p.m. Sunday.

A silver anniversary is inevitably a big deal, and so it was last year when the Niantic Light Parade turned 25. It was a time for bigger, brighter, better.

For John Wilson and about two-dozen friends and family members, that meant creating a grand Rudolph the Reindeer riding in an airplane. The plane and its red-nosed pilot seemed to lift to the sky and then lower its flight path, thanks to the fact it was all built on a bucket truck.

Their invention ended up nabbing the event's first-place prize, as have many past floats entered by Wilson and pals under the banner of his Niantic-based business, Sign Craft. And they're the only ones to have entered a float every single year.

After last year's festivities, though, Wilson's wife, Julie, had a suggestion.

"Julie's like, 'All right, that's it. We've made it 25 years. We can just stand down in front of the Grille on Main Street or something and just watch the parade and have a good time and not do all this craziness leading up to it,'" John Wilson recalls with a laugh. "I said, 'Nooooo, we cannot. I cannot picture myself on the side of the street. It's just gotta happen."

Wilson recalls that inaugural light parade all those years ago, when he was cheerfully low-tech: he duct-taped branches to his 1980s "Eskimo jacket" and strung lights around himself. He was accompanied by a little trailer with a Christmas tree on it.

But, my, how times have changed. Since then, it's been a matter of expanding creativity and complexity each year - which is part of the reason the crowds anticipate the floats with such glee.

In their 2011 entry, a towering Snoopy stood atop a red doghouse that covered a 24-foot-long truck - and, whenever Snoopy encountered overhead wires on the route, it lowered until it was lying down on the doghouse before resurfacing.

For a "Wizard of Oz"-themed concoction in 2012, folks cut up foil used to wrap poinsettia plants to create 1,200 poppies.

"They were cutting (the foil sheets) with scissors like paper dolls, making them into poppies," Wilson says. "It was an incredible amount of work. I don't know if anybody really understood how much work it was.

"But we always joke that we try to make something that's Rose Bowl-ish."

The building of each float is a whole lot of work, he acknowledges, but also a whole lot of fun. The Wilsons - whose three daughters are now in college - host get-togethers with everyone who works on the float, gathering around the kitchen table and sketching out ideas on a dry-erase board. John Wilson typically comes up with a creative concept and then everyone chimes in, suggesting what they can build and how they can make things work.

"It's that bond of friendship that we have - and there's new friends every year that have never done it but said, 'I'd love to help you do it this year,'" Wilson says.

And, beyond that, there is the reaction of all the festive folks who pack the parade route. Wilson talks about the "love that you get coming down the street. It's the Main Street in town where you grew up, and it's lined with people. ... It's seeing the little kids and interacting with the people."

While Wilson clearly loves the process of devising and then constructing these elaborate floats, he doesn't keep track of the numbers involved - the manhours or the various costs or the total lights used.

They build the float, by the way, at Sign Craft in Niantic. Generators are loaded into a big trailer that trails behind the float, and the trailer is covered with sponsors' names.

As for this year's creation, a cagey Wilson says, "One hint that I have told people - I say it's a very cold float."

Wilson says he's not sure how many times the floats that he and his friends and family members create have won a first-place prize.

He does, though, keep the trophies and a little silver platter in his "man's room in the basement."

"The trophy is just that little symbol. The real trophy is, again, probably the memories of going down the street," he says.

"It's really a holiday tradition now in Niantic. ... You kind of want to think you were a part of what it took to build it to that point or to keep it going," Wilson says.

Details of this year's event

The Niantic Light Parade steps off at 5 p.m. Sunday, travelling down Main Street.

Robin Grandieri, a parade committee member who is also East Lyme Parks & Recreation Department's administrative assistant, says that the participants range from dance groups to fire departments. Some Coast Guard cadets will serve as the grand marshals and will help judge.

There are a few changes: Although fireworks kicked off the light parade for the last couple of years, there won't be any pyrotechnics this time. And a full-out Winterfest, which began in 2011, won't be part of the festivities, although a few activities will still take place. Ice sculptures will be created by Ice Matters on Liberty Green starting at 4 p.m., Grandieri says. Balloon creatures and designs will be whipped up thanks to April's Balloon Creations from 5 to 7 p.m. at the police station on Main Street. Kids can meet "Frozen" characters Anna and Kris, thanks to Simply Enchanted, from 5 to 7 p.m. on Main Street.