Manhattan Irish Fest: Watch Parade With First-Timers To Event

MANHATTAN, IL — Is St. Patrick's Day your favorite holiday, and you're too impatient to wait two weeks for March 17? Then Manhattan is where you should be this weekend for the village's Irish Fest.

The two-day festival — organized by the village and the Irish American Society of County Will — ended Saturday, but it did so in grand fashion with its 24th annual parade. This year, Joseph "Joe" Curran, a lifelong Manhattan resident and U.S. Army veteran, was the parade's grand marshal. The 1997 Lincoln-Way High School graduate served in Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s, and he's currently an irrigation specialist at the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood.

Couldn't make Saturday's parade? Or were you at the downtown Manhattan event but want to relive it again? Check out Patch's video of the parade. Editor Joe Vince also talks to a father sharing the tradition with his son for the first time, as well as a family who just moved to the village and was attending its first Manhattan Irish Fest Parade.

Watch it again below:

The 2018 Manhattan Irish Fest Parade (Photos by Joe Vince | Patch)