That graduation photo is iconic. You know, the one that your mum gets hundreds of small versions of to send every member of the family?
It stands proudly on a fireplace, covered in dust, and exhibited to all your future boyfriends and girlfriends when they meet the parents.
But what do you do if you don’t make it to graduation? This group of mates from Wiltshire thought of the perfect plan to get their friend Chris a graduation photo to remember.
Chris graduated from the University of West England (UWE), but mistakenly told his parents the ceremony would be in October or November.
With this crucial misinformation, his mum and dad booked a holiday in what they thought was the safe zone of July.
You can see where this is going.
Speaking to UNILAD, Corey, who played Chris’s dad in the photo, said:
Unfortunately they were away on holiday during the actual date of his graduation.
He didn’t want to go on his own so he didn’t go, which he was okay with.
When he told us he wasn’t going, that’s when the joke was made to do the fake graduation picture.
Though the photo looks very high budget, the guys were actually incredibly thrifty in funding it.
Talking about how they created the outfits, Corey explained:
So we got most of the stuff we needed for the photo from Asda, and used what we could of things that we already owned.
The dress was from Asda along with party hats, ribbon and a cake board.
The hat was made from cutting the top of a party hat off and taping the cake board to it, these had to be coloured in black with a sharpie as we couldn’t get find/get any spray paint.
The hat was the hardest thing to make as it just wouldn’t stay on his head, but after a few alterations we got it to stay on his head at an angle we were happy with
Corey’s (and my) favourite aspect of the photo was the graduation ‘scroll’. The lads used their imagination on this one, taking a simple kitchen roll, tying a ribbon around it, and transforming it into a believable certificate that Chris had worked for three years for.
Continuing to explain how the parts of the outfits came together, Corey said:
The gown was an old grim reaper halloween costume that I had which we turned inside out, so the hood was on the inside, and cut it open a bit so you could see the graduates shirt and tie.
The Hawaiian shirt was my step dad’s which I borrowed. The glasses were just my normal sunglasses haha and the hat I had kicking about from ages ago.
The graduate already had some fake moustaches from a present someone got him one time so we used one of those, it was called the walrus style. The mom also already had the blonde wig from a time she dressed up for a costume party.
Once they were all in costume and got the cake board to balance on the party hat, they employed another friend to take the all-important photo.
Corey said they ‘couldn’t believe how good it looked’ and ‘it went above and beyond our expectations’ from being an idea he threw out as a joke to being ‘one of the best and funniest things we had ever done’.
The group of friends of course didn’t want to step on the toes of Chris’s parents, so even politely asked them what they thought of it.
It turns out that they thought it was a great idea and ‘absolutely loved the result of it’, while their post on Reddit received 105k upvotes.
The boys got a great response on Reddit, with many commenting they showed ‘true friendship’, while others observed that the guy on the right bears a resemblance to Daniel Radcliffe.
He has really made that Asda dress look classy.
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