PLAINFIELD — Minutes before the 63rd annual Miss Plainfield Rotary Pageant lit up the stage on Saturday, contestant Sasha Smallridge was putting the finishing touches on her mime costume.

“I’m not nervous at all; I just want to get on stage,” she said.

Hours later, Smallridge, one of the 19 Plainfield High School seniors who sang and danced their way through the event, had traded her costume for a formal gown — and a queen’s crown.

“I’m shocked,” said the first-place winner. “I don’t have the words. I’m so grateful and this is an unforgettable experience that will stay with me for the rest of my life.”

For more than two hours inside the Plainfield High School auditorium, contestants transformed themselves into ventriloquists, contortionists, concession items and magicians with the help of puppets, barbells and stuffed elephants, part of this year’s “Going to the Circus” theme.”

After individual costume and gown portions, the teens rallied the crowd with a group dance — conducted in formal gowns, before thanking Director Heidi Fontaine for her work.

A three-judge panel, basing their scores of previous interviews and the night’s showcase events, chose the following winners: Queen, Smallridge; first runner-up, Chloe Joslyn; second runner-up, Rezearta Ferraj; and Miss Congeniality, Kelsi Devolve.

“There were so many amazing girls up there tonight,” said Joslyn, who sported a cotton-candy costume. “And I love all of them.”

Before the curtain went up, Director Heidi Fontaine, who helped guide her charges through months of rehearsals, said some of the girls were “feeling their nerves.”

“But it’s just exciting to be here tonight,” she said.

Even before they signed on for the pageant, the contestants had already made their marks as star athletes, national honor scholars, volunteers and performing arts stand-outs.

“This is such an unforgettable experience,” said Ferraj, who crafted a snake-charmer persona for the pageant. “I’m blessed to have met such great friends. The connections we made, there’s nothing to compare it to.”

The event, which enables the Rotary to raise $3,500 each year for local scholarships, drew generations of past performers, many of them the mothers, sisters and aunts of those on stage Saturday night. Lorie Chartier, who won the 1983 competition, sat as her daughter, Hannah Dagenais — the lion tamer — made her pageant debut.

“It’s taken 36 years to get to this day,” Chartier said. “I was very young when my mom took me to my first pageant. I got home that night, made a paper crown and said that someday I’d be a princess.

Chartier said getting to watch her daughter train for the pageant felt like a homecoming.

“I know from the experience I had how much fun this can be,” she said. “I told her this would be something she never forgot.”