CORNWALL -- If you’re graduating high school in 2020, odds are you won’t be getting the chance to celebrate prom this year.
But two seniors at St. Joseph Catholic Secondary School in Cornwall took matters into their own hands.
Chasity Derouchie and Alexis Besner had an idea to still celebrate prom with their classmates.
“We have a group chat on Facebook basically that everyone uses to show their dresses or any prom ideas,” says Derouchie. “I texted them and said hey guys lets do a big video, it will be so cool.”
The two girls were able to round up 39 other students for their video, showing each student dressed in casual clothes, and with a little camera trick, transform into their prom outfits.
Derouchie says “It didn’t happen easily. Me and Alexis we worked on it from morning, lunch, night. It was everyday for weeks.”
When they posted the virtual prom video to Facebook, it had a thousand views in the first hour and kept climbing.
“We weren’t even attempting to go viral. It wasn’t just to do that,” says Besner. “It was to show everyone that if everyone works together you can make a situation better, especially with everything going on.”
“We have about 19-point-5-thousand views,” says Derouchie.
A viral virtual prom isn’t what most of these seniors were expecting to be a part of at the end of their school year. And though these grads won’t be celebrating the real thing, this video will bring lasting memories for years to come.
“At first, everyone was like, how is she gonna put together all these videos and come up with something from it,” says Derouchie. “By the end of the video everybody was like, ok it was pretty cool.”
Besner says “it’s now a memory of a giant pandemic that we had. I couldn’t wear this dress because of this coronavirus. So I don’t know, I definitely will wear it again. Maybe if we have a high school reunion we can all wear our dresses if they still fit.”
