On Saturday, 26 September, Mariah Tibbetts was crowed Miss Cayman Islands Universe (MCIU) 2020 by last year's titleholder, Kadejah Bodden. The Miss Cayman Islands Universe Crowning Ceremony took place in front of an audience of family, friends and supporters at The Grand Old House.

Due to the global pandemic the Committee was not able to host its annual pageant and opted for a crowning ceremony instead to introduce Mariah as the new MCIU.

The night was hosted by Cayman Islands Government TV news anchor and MCIU committee member, Donna Bush. We heard speeches from various people such as Councillor David Wight, Chairperson for the MCIU pageant, Derri Dacres-Lee, Kadejah Bodden and a representative from the Cayman Islands Cancer Society, which is the chosen platform for this year.

Entertainment was provided by Azucar International and singer Erica Assai.

For her grand entrance, Mariah was accompanied by Leroy Evans singing You Are So Beautiful.

Although this was not the usual crowning moment, Mariah, like so many titleholders before her, was serenaded with the song ‘My Caymanian Girl’ which was performed by Burmon Scott.

Mariah competed in the 2019 MCIU pageant where she placed 1st Runner Up and won the People's Choice award. One of the obligations of the 1st Runner Up is that if, for any reason, the winner can not fulfill her duty then the 1st Runner Up will take her place. 

In this case, Kadejah Bodden has already competed for the Miss Universe (MU) title and would therefore not be eligible to compete again thus allowing for Mariah to step into the role as the new Queen.

The MCIU Committee Chairperson, Ms. Derri Dacres-Lee shared the Committee’s enthusiasm for having Mariah as the new MCIU. She stated that, “The Committee and myself are very excited to have Mariah Tibbetts as our 2020 Miss Cayman Islands Universe. It’s been quite a journey this past year, facing some COVID-19 challenges, trying to figure out if we were going to have a pageant or not, and then finally getting the approval from the Miss Universe Organization to use our 1st Runner Up from 2019 pageant as our titleholder. That brought some relief to us, of course in these vulnerable economic times for a lot of our sponsors.

We really look forward to working with Mariah. She’s a well rounded young lady, she’s very respectful, beautiful inside and out, intelligent, she’s well groomed all already. We do have some plans to further her training later on, of course we’re taking the whole COVID-19 situation on a day by day basis. But as soon as we can get her some overseas training, we will be looking into that. One of our trainers this year will be the Miss Universe Jamaica directors, she’ll be going over there and getting some further training.

Here locally she’ll be trained by our former Miss Cayman Islands Universe Caitlin Tyson. So we have an exciting year ahead. Miss Universe will be held in the United States in 2021 so that’s also on the horizon and we’re looking forward to that too. We’re taking it one day at at time but we know we’re going to have a wonderful year ahead of us with Mariah.

Mariah expressed how her excitement on being crowned the new MCIU.