Decked out in formal wear and smiling like giddy teenagers, Cliff and Heather Hawkins posed in front of gold backdrop Saturday hoping to catch a moment they would never forget.

“We’re going to prom,” Cliff said. “We should capture how good we look doing it.”

This isn’t the couple’s first time going to prom. The first time around was more than 20 years ago, as the couple attended the Ross Beatty High School prom together in 1995.

“That was a long time ago,” Heather said. “We are certainly wiser, and better looking, than we were back then.”

The Hawkins had their chance to relive their prom thanks to the Ranger Project Graduation.

The group, led parents of seniors at Ross Beatty Jr./Sr. High School, organized an adult prom Saturday evening at the Cass County Council on Aging in Cassopolis to raise money for Project Graduation.

Project Graduation is a nationwide program, where the parents of a school’s graduating class band together to raise money to provide a safe post-graduation party for the students that is both alcohol and drug free.

The money raised from the adult prom will go toward creating a safe night that the graduating Ross Beatty High School students will not forget, said Cassopolis Project Graduation President Lesley Steensma.

Selling more than 150 tickets to the prom event at $25 each, Project Graduation raised around $3,000. This puts the group at a quarter of the way to the full amount they hope to raise for the graduation party, Steensma said.

“We just wanted everyone to have a great, fun night,” Steensma said. “And it’s for a good cause, too.”

Several of the attendees to the prom said they were having a good time, and that it was an opportunity to do something different than they were used to.

Kevin and Tara Baker graduated from Ross Beatty in 1988 and 1990, respectively. They said the event gave them the rare chance to get out of the house for a formal date.

“Our son is graduating this year, so that’s why we came, but it will also be a chance to see some people we haven’t seen in a long time,” Tara said. “I even got [Kevin] to put on a tie,” she said with a laugh.

Jim Rouse, 82, and wheelchair bound, donned a black suit with a red rose boutonniere for the event. He said that after reading about the adult prom in the newspaper, he got excited for the chance to do something out of the ordinary.

“I used to love to dance,” Rouse said. “I can’t really dance now, but I brought a caretaker with me. She said she’ll take me out on the dance floor and dance around me, so I’m still going to have a lot of fun…. I’m just looking to have some fun.”

As for the Hawkins, they said the Project Graduation event offered them a chance to relive their prom and do it better than they had the first go around.

“[At their 1995 prom], we actually only stayed for about an hour, then we went bowling with our friends,” Cliff said. “But we are actually having a good time tonight. We won’t be leaving.”