A fairy tale came to life for 16-year-old Ka­ri­na Sama­roos­ingh who ar­rived in a gold­en car­riage at the Trinidad Hilton and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain for her grad­u­a­tion ball, much to the sur­prise of guests, par­ents, teach­ers and fel­low grad­u­ates.

Traf­fic came to a halt on Thurs­day night as the in­tri­cate­ly de­signed car­riage made its way in­to the ho­tel’s car park to loud ap­plause, horn-honk­ing, flash­ing head­lights, whis­tles and screams of de­light.

Seat­ed with Sama­roos­ingh in the car­riage was her boyfriend Nathan Greer, 17, a grad­u­at­ing stu­dent of Trin­i­ty Col­lege East who was dressed in a shim­mer­ing white and gold hand-sewn tuxe­do with match­ing shoes. Greer is a sprint­er with Sil­ver Bul­lets Ath­let­ics Club.

Sama­roos­ingh, a stu­dent of Bish­ops Anstey High School East be­gan plan­ning for her grad­u­a­tion in Jan­u­ary. She said she al­ways want­ed to “feel like a princess” on her grad­u­a­tion day and want­ed to be like fairy tale princess Cin­derel­la, ar­riv­ing in a car­riage.

She chose gold as her colour scheme for the big day and got a seam­stress to make a fit and flare dress with a de­tach­able red train. A tiara was her main ac­ces­so­ry.

How­ev­er, she need­ed a car­riage to make the oc­ca­sion mem­o­rable.

“I re­mem­ber see­ing a car­riage at Nathan’s aunt busi­ness place, Events Land Lim­it­ed, and asked if I could use it for grad­u­a­tion,” said Samoors­ingh, who lives in Ari­ma.

“When my mom heard that I was in­ter­est­ed in us­ing the car­riage she asked me if I was sure. She said it would have been far eas­i­er to go to the ball in a lim­ou­sine. To me, that was too or­di­nary. I want­ed to be dif­fer­ent, to stand out. So there was some­what of a de­bate over the car­riage be­ing used but I was able to con­vince mom even­tu­al­ly.”

Sama­roos­ingh said the com­pa­ny was giv­en the all clear to spruce up the car­riage which had on­ly been used once for a wed­ding.

On the evening of the grad­u­a­tion, it was towed be­hind a Hilux pick­up from Ch­agua­nas and when it ar­rived at the bot­tom of the dri­ve­way lead­ing to the Hilton’s car park Sama­roos­ingh and Greer got in.

Ahead of the car­riage were three bik­ers from Team Splin­ters who revved their en­gines, burned tyres and did wheel­ies to grab at­ten­tion in the car park which was filled to ca­pac­i­ty. This un­usu­al sight led to a pile-up of traf­fic for sev­er­al min­utes, but many felt it was worth the wait.

The spot­light was fi­nal­ly on Sama­roos­ingh who blushed, laughed and waved to on­look­ers.

When the car­riage came to a stop, Sama­roos­ingh was es­cort­ed by Greer in­to the ho­tel’s ball­room where she was com­pli­ment­ed for her ef­forts.

Look­ing back, Sama­roos­ingh, the youngest in her fam­i­ly, said she just want­ed to make her dream a re­al­i­ty.

“It was al­so stress­ful be­cause I want­ed every­thing to be per­fect,” she ad­mit­ted, re­veal­ing that it cost her fam­i­ly “a cou­ple of thou­sand dol­lars” to put every­thing to­geth­er.

“I felt it was my time to shine. The mon­ey spent was well worth it. I have no re­grets. This is some­thing I would re­mem­ber for a life­time,” said Sama­roos­ingh who will be go­ing abroad in pur­suit of her oth­er big dream—be­com­ing an en­tre­pre­neur.

She said the ef­fort was worth it as she felt like Cin­derel­la at her grad­u­a­tion ball. The on­ly thing miss­ing was the glass slip­pers and she did she not leave the ball at mid­night.