The centennial celebration at the Labor Department’s annual Honor Awards event should have been a glitzy affair this year, but the sequester and furloughs got in the way.

Gone were the lavish flower arrangements, the red carpet, cash awards of up to $10,000, fancy trophies and glossy programs. Instead, in a bow to sequestration and in an effort to commemorate the department’s creation in 1913, award winners posed with cutouts of the first labor secretary, received nifty trophies made by Jobs Corps kids and even had their pictures taken with a Washington Nationals Racing President, William Howard Taft, a tribute to the president who created the Cabinet agency.