Project Prom on March 8th

Cheyenne Warner-Bennion, Council local and real estate agent, has always had a passion for beauty. She did her first beauty pageant in high school, and was a Princess in the small town pageant. However, she didn’t get around to doing another one until 2013 in Idaho, when Cheyenne participated in the Miss Idaho, America Pageant. She did Miss Idaho again in 2022 where she won the Spirit of America Award. The next year she was Miss Intermountain Region for the Continental Worldwide Pageant, which is where she met her Sash Sister, Dawn Quednow. “Every pageant you meet one Sash Sister who aligns with you and they’re a friend forever,” said Cheyenne. So it was with Dawn, who was at the time collecting donations of dresses for a program she was doing called Prom Perfect, where girls could find a dress to wear to Prom or other events. Cheyenne helped her with some of the many donations of old pageant gowns, learned about the program she was doing, and decided that she wanted to do it as well and wanted to bring it to Council. So, she started Project Prom.

While Cheyenne was Miss Intermountain West, she had been very involved with the Friends of the Library in Council, and she stayed connected. When she got the idea for Project Prom she came to Council Librarian, Milise Blanton and pitched her vision for Project Prom. Milise thought it was a great idea and was happy to use the library for the event and a drop off location for donations. The first Project Prom event is taking place on Saturday, March 8th, at the Council Valley Free Library, from 10-5:30.

Cheyenne has collected over 50 gowns for the Project Prom main event. Many have come from her “Sash Sister” Dawn, now Mrs. Midwest Galaxy, who has been sending her “boxes of beautiful” for the day. Many have come from private donations from people who heard about the event and wanted to support it. All of the dresses will be offered free of charge to the girls who come to pick one out. The girls can even keep the dress if they want, or they can bring it back to donate to another girl. The event is open to anyone, from Council to New Meadows and Midvale, or however far they want to come. In addition to dresses, Cheyenne has received donations of jewelry, shoes, and purses to help accessorize. They have gowns in all different sizes available. It was important to both Milise and Cheyenne to offer this at no cost to the community. “We’re not as affluent as some of the bigger cities.” Said Milise, “I think it’s important for girls to come be able to get nice things and have it not cost an arm and a leg.”

So far, they have had a great response from the community. Many community members have offered to volunteer in addition to donating dresses. There will be moms going with their daughters to not only come and pick out a dress, but to also to volunteer and help with the event. “To take the volunteerism that we’ve stated and take it to the next generation and show the benefits of it,” Cheyenne said, is especially important. One thing they could still use help with is monetary donation to help with dry cleaning expenses. Many of the dresses have not been dry cleaned yet and have makeup on them from the pageants they were used in. Project Prom has started a donation fund so there is money available for the girls to get them dry cleaned if they can’t afford to. There is a donation jar up currently at the library. The library is also still accepting donations of dresses and accessories.

Cheyenne and Milise hope to have a good turnout for the event on Saturday. They have all the dresses sorted by size and a group of volunteers are coming the day before to help set up the dresses on racks at the library. Girls can come and try on and pick out the perfect dress. “I see it almost like free shopping and fun!” said Cheyenne. She said it has been great having Dawn to bounce ideas off of for the project, since Dawn had already done a similar event. When Cheyenne asked her Sash Sister “What if not very many people come?” Cheyenne said that Dawn told her “if one girl shows up and finds her perfect prom dress to feel beautiful, we’ve done our job.”

Cheyenne and Milise hope that Project Prom will continue long after Saturday. Cheyenne would love to see a senior at the high school pick it up as a senior project in the future. “I think if I can pass these opportunities on to somebody else and again help teach that volunteerism side of things to some of the girls in the community,” said Cheyenne, “Show them the joy that we have doing this, and hopefully, maybe they’ll pick up on it too. She said she did feel a little bad about not having suits for the men yet, but thought that might be somewhere they could expand in the future. “You’ve got to start somewhere!”

“I kind of grew up doing Project Prom very unofficially,” said Milise, “It was really nice for me, I mean, that’s like fond memories.” Cheyenne, too, said she borrowed a lot of hand-me-down dresses for dances growing up, and she understands how hard it is for parents to either spend that kind of money on a dress, or have to tell their children they can’t afford it. That is where Project Prom comes in. “I think it’s hard too for parents to have to say ‘no,’” said Cheyenne, “and we’re going to set up an environment where everyone can just say “yes!’”