Let your light shine at Atlanta Beltline Lantern Parade

1. You’ll have more fun if you have a lantern.

2. The Seed & Feed Marching Abominables band leads the parade, starting at 8:30 p.m. Sept. 6. Lineup begins at 7:30 p.m.

3. The route is 2.7 miles long.

4. This is a kid-friendly event, and dogs are welcome, too, but know their tolerance for heat, distance and crowds.

5. If you bring your bike, you have to walk it in the parade. It’s too crowded to ride.

6. No flying lanterns allowed. They are a safety hazard.

7. The parade winds down at Monroe Drive in a field by Park Tavern, which hosts an after party.

8. Parking is limited. Plan to walk, ride your bike, carpool, use Uber or Lyft, take a taxi or ride MARTA. The MLK MARTA station is four blocks from lineup; the Midtown MARTA station is six blocks from the finish.

9. It’s free.

10. Do we even have to say this? Wear comfortable shoes, bring some water and carry out whatever you carry in.

I NEED A LANTERN FAST!

If you missed out on all the lantern-making workshops, paper lanterns will be for sale during parade lineup on Irwin Street for $15 cash, while supplies last. Or you can pick one up at Ikea (441 16th St., Atlanta) or Richards Variety Store (931 Monroe Drive, Atlanta). Barring that, you can make one by blowing up a balloon, covering it with strips of colored tissue paper affixed with Elmer's Glue, which has been diluted with a bit of water. Once it's dry, pop the balloon, insert an LED tap light (available at hardware stores) and tie it to a stick. Voila.

Organizers were astonished when 10,000 light-bearing souls turned out for the fourth annual Atlanta Beltline Lantern Parade last year. It took several hours on a sultry Saturday night for the illuminated procession to snake its way from Irwin Street in Old Fourth Ward to Monroe Drive in Midtown.

Begun in 2010 to bring attention to the then-nascent Atlanta Beltline, it attracted only a few thousand participants those first few years.

Now 2014 promises to be even bigger. Founder and organizer Chantelle Rytter hosted three times the number of lantern-making workshops this year, thanks to the generosity of restaurateur George DeMeglio. He had a three-bedroom house on Ralph McGill Boulevard sitting empty, so he donated it to the cause and Lantern House was born.

“That was a game-changer,” said Rytter, who oversaw the making of more than 500 new lanterns.

This year also marks the addition of two marching bands. Joining Wasted Potential Brass Band and the Seed & Feed Marching Abominables, who participated last year, are the Black Sheep Ensemble and Mausiki Scales & the Common Ground Collective. There also will be more police presence with the Atlanta Beltline bicycle cops providing assistance with crowd control.

Several new large-scale lanterns are expected to make an appearance, including a 14-foot praying mantis with articulated legs and wings, a similarly sized dove, a couple of big fish and an owl.

The Atlanta Beltline Lantern Parade kicks off Art on the Atlanta Beltline, a 10-week-long outdoor event featuring 100 art installations and performances.