With all this talk of prom dresses I thought we’d ask a little topical Big Question. Yes it’s late but –much like prom dates and the traditional subsequent panicked wait for Our Monthly Friend– better late than never.
Francesca and Plumcake want to know: All about your prom. Give us the dirt!
The night of my senior prom my boyfriend and I, the most popular couple in school (natch) had broken up after three years. We still had to put in an appearance. It was awkward to be sure. The awkwardness was compounded by a half-page photo in the local newspaper labeling us as “The Happy Couple: Prom King and Queen!”
10th grade, I went to the prom with my 12th grade boyfriend. Mom made me a dress of blue satin with rope pearl straps. Afterward we went back to a friends place and all hung out together.
12th grade, I went to another school’s prom with a friend from an even more different school. Mom also made me a long scoop neck green velvet sheath dress with a side slit up the leg, with a black velvet cape. Still have the cape.
Reminds me, I need to scan in a bunch of old pictures from growing up…
Comment by Pinkleader — March 27, 2008 @ 3:48 pm
It wasn’t a big romance, but we went to the prom together, and danced and had fun. As the class Fat Girl, I was lucky to have a date at all. He came out of the closet a few years later, and we’re still friends, though he does bring up from time to time the fact that I made him wear a BEIGE tux.
Comment by Jane — March 27, 2008 @ 4:14 pm
My senior year, me and my best friend (not forever) decided to go stag so we could walk each other out in the senior march. It was a little goofy now that I think back…what’s even worse is the farmer’s tan I was sporting with a sleeveless dress, OMG! I had no style back then!
Comment by jen — March 27, 2008 @ 4:16 pm
I went to the rival High School’s prom with my Senior boyfriend my Junior year. We had a lot of fun, and I felt beautiful for the first time in a long time. I was a big girl then (at least for high school) and I did not feel that way at all that night:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/katydaqueen/205976447/in/set-1462511/
& our group:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/katydaqueen/205976495/in/set-1462511/
We were GORGEOUS! :)
Comment by Krista — March 27, 2008 @ 4:17 pm
I went to my senior prom with my boyfriend at the time (who was 22). I wore the most beautiful pink dress. It had a lace overlay top, full satin skirt and had this tiny belt to go around it. I felt like Jackie Kennedy in it. I still have the dress (although it really doesn’t fit anymore) because I plan to have it copied in a size I can wear now.
Comment by dr nic — March 27, 2008 @ 4:23 pm
The Annalucia did not go to the prom, so there is nothing to tell.
Comment by Annalucia — March 27, 2008 @ 4:47 pm
I went to my senior prom with my girlfriend’s cousin, who turned out to be a great kisser. This was in the mid 1960s, when amphetamines were the miracle cure for being overweight and in the space of 2 months my size decreased dramatically. Hey what did I know? Mom took me to the big city and I ended up with an emerald green raw silk gown (in an era when most prom dresses looked like frothy pastel ice cream sodas). That dress could be worn to this day and be considered quite chic. Wish I still had it. Wish I still had the great kisser too. :-)
Comment by gemdiva — March 27, 2008 @ 5:08 pm
My prom date was a quintessentially Canadian. Since we could leave out no-one or have any hurt feelings, then entire graduating class drew random names for dates out of a hat (class of 850) to determine dates. I am serious. Fortunately I was assigned the football QB and he was already a dear friend and nice guy and a great time. Some of my friends were not so lucky. Anyhow, since it was all about being nice, once the budgeting for the limo was taken care of, and we had sat through a place card and plate service dinner at the fancy hotel, everyone paired up with their preference and the night went on from there. PS- I wore a black raw silk column dress with silk thread embroidered roses. I found the fabric in Vancouver’s China town, and a friend of my grand mother pieced and sewed it by hand for me. Still have the dress, lost track of the quarterback.
Comment by Bobbi — March 27, 2008 @ 6:03 pm
I went to two proms, the senior prom that took place when I was a junior and my own senior prom. I ended with as someone’s date to the former because I really wanted to go and my on-again, off-again boyfriend decided not to attend. The “someone was a nerdy but nice fellow from my advanced math class…poor chap, we’d nicknamed him “Tampon.” I sort of gently badgered him into asking me, and then felt absolutely awful about it for years because I wondered if he would have gone with some dream girl if it hadn’t been for me. Gah, now I feel simply horrid all over again.
My own prom was fun, though rather nerve wracking as the on-again but mostly off-again boyfriend didn’t accept my invitation until the very last minute. So last minute in fact that it was uncertain whether we’d be able to get tickets, and there wasn’t any more space in my friends’ limos. That meant I got all gussied up in my pretty blue ballgown and opera length white gloves (which I still have!) only to ride in the boyfriend’s icky blue van.
I loved that dress so damn much, but it was cheap, and the lovely light blue fabric eventually faded to a mottled hot pink in the dark of my mother’s basement. How does blue turn into pink, anyway?
Comment by Never teh Bride — March 27, 2008 @ 6:44 pm
I brought a good friend of mine up from two states away for prom with me. I woke up the morning of prom sick a 24 hour stomach flu (after several years without having had it), and had to call him to let him know and keep him from getting on the bus he was taking up. Sweetest guy in existence that he is, my date told me he would come anyway, regardless of whether we ended up at prom, because he wanted to see me even if it meant sitting on the couch walking movies through my intermittent…sickness. Thankfully I was well enough to make it to 45 minutes of the actual event and wear the FABULOUS deep blue silk Vera Wang slip dress I found on sale (my school is all about cocktail dresses for formal events). I wasn’t there for very long, but it was enough to see people, enjoy the experience, and leave my date there with my friends (who adore him) to actually have some fun while I slept. Oh, and then I rowed a crew race the next day, which in retrospect was not the best idea for my stomach…
Comment by crewbie — March 27, 2008 @ 7:08 pm
Bobbi — that’s a really Canadian prom! Did everybody get hugs, too? :) It’s a weird idea but I can see the theory behind it.)
I went with my gay friend. I didn’t have much fun but that was my own fault since everyone else did.
Comment by prettytwininglight — March 27, 2008 @ 7:36 pm
I didn’t go to my prom. I was never interested in school dances or any of that sort of thing. My friends were very upset with me, as was the guy who’d asked me to be his prom date. In lieu of prom, I went out to eat at an old-timey diner with my best friend (who was a junior, dating a sophomore, and thus not eligible to attend prom anyway) and we had a great time.
Comment by Cat — March 27, 2008 @ 9:07 pm
Since the guy I was in love with got asked to my prom by my cousin (ouch), I went with my best girlfriend who didn’t have a date either. We had a blast, as it was very low stress, but we still got to wear the pretty dress (mine was black and pink, kind of mermaidish) and be beautiful for an evening. Actually had a great time, danced like a moron, etc. I got to dance a slow song with my crush, so I was happy. Ironically, since we went to church together and tradition was to wear our prom clothes to church the Sunday after the prom, and my cousin’s dress was also black and pink (thus his vest and stuff went well with my dress), and my cousin didn’t go to church with us, everyone thought we had gone together. I’m kind of glad we didn’t, now, turns out he’s boring. The memory of dancing and laughing with my best friend is way better than the could be memory of having nothing to talk about all night with a granted, very cute date.
(my prom was only a few years ago…I’m 22)
Comment by Rachael — March 28, 2008 @ 1:02 am
I went in a group with four other girls. We did it properly: rented a limo, danced together, even had the photographer take a picture of us all together. I wore a pale blue satin skirt with a matching sparkly long-sleeved top–it looked pretty good, even though it was intended to be a bridesmaid dress rather than a prom dress. Going in a group wasn’t a big deal since our school was very conservative Christian and hardly anyone went on dates. I think most people went stag.
I think I danced with one of the chaperones as many times as I danced with any of the students, but that didn’t bother me. He was a much better dancer and more interesting conversationalist than any of the boys my age. There was a live band that played Big Band music, and a couple who taught different kinds of dances (a polka, the Virginia Reel, and two Middle Eastern folkdances) when the band took a break. It was all great fun, and no drama–unlike the time I went to a dance with a boy from another school who wouldn’t let me dance with anyone else, but that’s a story I prefer not to dwell on.
Comment by JaneC — March 28, 2008 @ 1:37 am
My junior prom was lots of fun. A group of my friends and I piled into my Mom’s suburban, had a cheap dinner, crashed a wedding at a fancy seaside hotel, then went to the dance. I wore a slinky black dress, with a beaded bodice, and a halterneck. My date was wonderful, and was one of the most incredible dancers’ that I’ve ever known.
Comment by sam — March 28, 2008 @ 4:39 am
We do not really have “proms” in Germany, but something quite similiar to celebrate the end of Highschool. And it’s totally acceptable for a girl to go alone, which I did. I went there with a bunch of friends, dressed in a nice 80s LBD and there was him. My highschool crush for four years, he graduated a year before me.
Our eyes met across the room.
Can’t remember if we danced. I do remember however this evening it dawned on me he was quite the pompous p****. I think prom bored me pretty soon so I left with my friends and a very special friend and I drove to the beach even later, during ebb in the morning, just to watch the darkness before dawn and listen to the quiet.
And that’s my favourite prom moment.
I still can smell the salt.
Comment by teapunk — March 28, 2008 @ 7:23 am
I went, 11th and 12th grade, although I would not dance anything but the slow dances. (That is a longer and separate story!) The first year, I had been seeing a boy for a few months and we planned to go. But the second year, I was not planning to go at all – I was boyfriendless and not especially interested in paying money to eat bad food and feel bad about not dancing. Then, two weeks before, I met another boy. On a lark, I asked him if he wanted to go to the prom, and he agreed – he had not gone to his own (he had graduated the year before) and thought it would be interesting.
Have you ever tried to buy a prom dress for a Big Girl two weeks before the prom? The only things left on the racks were hideous.
And then I thought: What did Sarah wear last year? Dana? Shannon? And I had no idea. So, I figured, no one would remember what TeleriB wore last year, which was a very flattering navy blue halter top with a square neckline. So I wore it, and we sat with my friends and talked about all manner of geeky things while we hid from the dance floor. And indeed, no one noticed I was wearing a rerun.
Comment by TeleriB — March 28, 2008 @ 7:48 am
I didn’t go to my proms either. Nobody asked me and when I asked, nobody would go with me.
One nice memory is my mom taking me out for a steak for Senior Prom, and me running into some very nice kids in my class on dates. We had dinner, went out for ice cream, and then took a long drive through the countryside. Got home for the season finale of Saturday Night Live (in the classic days), and all was good. Since my mom is not known for her sensitivity, I remember this time when she “got it” very well.
I did, however, end up wearing a prom dress for one of my BFF’s wedding a couple years ago – it was her second wedding and she wanted a scaled down version of the works. It was a pale periwinkle blue column dress with nice satin detailing at the bust. It was fine for what it was, but I have to get it to a consignment store so that it can help another big girl have a big night.
Comment by dowdydiva — March 28, 2008 @ 8:01 am
I went with my steady boyfriend. It was actually a lovely romantic night, although I remember being mortified that he picked me up in his dad’s pick-up truck (washed, but still…). The things that seem important when you’re 17, you know. I wore a periwinkle shantung Jessica McClintock with a long, full skirt complete with crinolines and a sweetheart neckline. It was the 80’s, after all. After we spent time at the actual prom, danced, and had pictures taken, we went to Denny’s for a 2 a.m. breakfast. It was packed with a group of visiting Japanese businessmen, who all wanted (and got) their picture taken with us. Surreal, but true.
Comment by jen — March 28, 2008 @ 8:21 am
I really was not all that interested in going to my senior prom, but it seemed that other people were and my mom had me call the son of someone she worked with who was back from college for the summer. He’d gone to my school and I knew him sort of obliquely – he was a nice guy and showed up in his father’s dinner jacket and a tartan cummerbund. He was a great dancer and we had a nice time. The next day, my mother gave me a box with a set of gold cufflinks for him and that is when I found out that she’d called his father and basically begged him to make his son take me out. I had to go over to their house and give this guy these cufflinks – made me feel as if I’d “bought” the date. On the other hand…a couple of years ago, I found out that my DH had never gone to his prom. We had an opportunity to go to a fancy dinner-dance locally and I made myself a teal and black lace floor-length gown(from a Vogue Vintage pattern)and he rented a tux and we went and had a great time – he’d finally gotten to go to the prom.
Comment by Toby Wollin — March 28, 2008 @ 8:48 am
Oh man … senior prom. A guy in my circle of friends asked me to go with him, and I said yes — we were friends and I assumed he was merely asking the only girl he knew who didn’t have a date either. It turned out he’d been nursing a crush on me, one that I unfortunately didn’t return. Oh god, the awkward. Also, he wore black sneakers with his tux; I wouldn’t have cared, except that he kept saying “Look, Allison/John/Becky, I just wore black sneakers with my tux!” and putting his feet on the armrests of their chairs.
In spite of that I had a great time — I loved my dress, a square-neck lilac gown with pretty silver trim, and my friends and I got ready together. I had my hair “done” for the first time in my life, and I felt so glamorous and beautiful. Afterwards I went with some friends to an artsy coffee shop downtown — we looked seriously out of place amongst the scruffy grad students and starving writers, but that was half the fun!
Comment by Melissa B. — March 28, 2008 @ 9:33 am
I probably wouldn’t have thought of going to my senior prom except that my boyfriend – who had graduated the year before – started talking about his tux and what he was going to make us for dinner (he was a great cook!) so that I quickly figured out he was not only expecting to go, but looking forward to it. We wound up double dating with a friend of mine and his girlfriend. Eric (my friend) borrowed the family station wagon, and my boyfriend took care of dinner. The salad and quiche were nice, but that flourless chocolate cake was out of this freaking world.
My boyfriend’s mother took endless pictures of the four of us. My friend and his date wore matching forest green outfits. No, really, his tux was the same color as her dress. Come on, it was 1980. It’s a miracle that my boyfriend wore a black tux with a non-ruffled shirt. I’m not even sure where he found a rental tux without a ruffled shirt in those days. He also wore his grandfather’s opera cape, which was quite dashing. It was also lined in a pale blue, which looked great with my steel blue, long-sleeved gown trimmed with white lace, white ribbons, and little white embroidered starbursts.
When we got to the prom, almost every girl there except for me and my friend’s date was wearing a white Gunne Sax dress. Mine was Gunne Sax, too, but at least it was blue. I swear, the place looked like a bride’s convention with perhaps half a dozen brave souls wearing actual colors.
Alas, once I arrived at the prom, my party turned out to be pretty much over. We danced to one Styx cover, and then my boyfriend spent the rest of the damn evening discussing the special effects in Star Wars with another – equally bored – girl’s date while she and I made occassional pointed comments about men who insist on going to dances and then NOT DANCING WITH THEIR HOT DATES.
At least I looked superfantastic.
The ironic thing was that until the last minute I wasn’t sure I was going to have a formal dress. My father never saw the point of clothes beyond the fact that they covered the bits it’s not nice to show in public. It’s not that he was mean or stingy, but that he simply didn’t get it. And I didn’t have enough money of my own to go buy something anyway. I’d already sprung for the prom tickets and didn’t have any cash left over. I actually started looking at garage sales, but I was a very picky person with a really specific sense of style that didn’t match what people were getting rid of, and a short, skinny body (yes, I was very skinny then) that didn’t fit the sizes available at most of the garage sales I saw, anyway.
Then one day my mother came home and bustled me into her bedroom, and told me she’d done something she was terribly nervous about. She’d bought me a dress I hadn’t seen. She hadn’t bought me a piece of clothing I hadn’t seen aside from underpants since I was about five, so this really was something surprising. Like I said, I had a very specific style and it didn’t always make sense to people who weren’t me. In this case, though, she knew she would have to act fast: Gunne Sax formals were on a ridiculous sale, she knew I liked the general style of the line, and there was just one of the one she thought I would like best, and it happened to be my size.
And that how I wound up with my dream dress about four days before the prom. It really was perfect for me…once she took up the skirt about eight inches. Like I said, I’m not exactly tall.
To this day, though, the dress and the dinner are what I remember fondly about that night. The dance itself was a complete bust.
Comment by Twistie — March 28, 2008 @ 12:01 pm
My boyfriend at the time was a year older than me and in university. About 2 months before prom I found out he was cheating on me and so ended it. Any other boys in my high school who I would have considered going with were already spoken for, so I contacted J., a friend of mine at another school, with whom I’d been friends since infancy. We had a blast! J., not being in the least bit shy, handled all of these unknown people with grace, aplomb, and style, loved dancing, and was an attentive, fun date. We went to a prom after-party, where we both wound up hooking up with different people, but even then, he’d disentangle himself from his new friend about every 45 minutes or so to come and check on me and see if I needed anything. It was great fun, and at 6am, we joined a bunch of friends, still all dressed in our finery, for breakfast at McD’s.
As for the dress, I decided that the poofy dresses would not do my figure any favours, and went for full-out bombshell in a lipstick red strapless sheath dress with a long slit up one leg. Think Jessica Rabbit. I loved that dress. I’d wear it to any formal occasion even today, if it only fit me.
Comment by La Petite Acadienne — March 28, 2008 @ 12:06 pm
The Margo, she did not go to the prom. She and her friends put on the blue jeans and walked to the Dennys, where they drank the coffee and had the bitter conversations about the narrowness and hipocriscy of small town life, and how they would have brilliant futures long after the Prom King and Queen had married and were living in a doublewide trailer with their five children.
Comment by Margo — March 28, 2008 @ 1:02 pm
The Margo, she did not go to the prom. She and her friends put on the blue jeans and walked to the Dennys, where they drank the coffee and had the bitter conversations about the narrowness and hypocrisy of small town life, and how they would have brilliant futures long after the Prom King and Queen had married and were living in a doublewide trailer with their five children.
Comment by Margo — March 28, 2008 @ 1:03 pm
I went to the prom with my high school boyfriend (back from his first year of college) and I wore a black strapless dress that made me feel very daring and edgy in the sea of 80’s neon around me. The hair was feathered; the cheap champagne was drunk. Mere weeks later the boy and I broke up in the usual welter of 17-year-old sturm und drang…but twenty years later we reunited, and I married him last summer. (Though not in the black strapless dress :). )
Comment by Crinklish — March 28, 2008 @ 1:32 pm
My prom was 25 years ago, and the story is so long and complex that it takes about an hour to tell! Suffice it to say that it was a typical high school soap opera, and every time I talk to someone who was involved in it I find out more about what was going on.
I still have my dress – back then the hot style was faux-prairie wear from Gunne Sax. Of course, they did not make such dresses in my size. My mother bought one of the Gunne Sax patterns and resized it to fit me so I could wear what everyone else was wearing. It has great sentimental value.
Comment by TropicalChrome — March 28, 2008 @ 2:34 pm
My dress was a platinum Jessica McClintock ball gown, complete with train. My best friend’s younger brother took me to the prom when I couldn’t find a date (I was 17 he was almost 16). We had a great time, dated on and off for a couple of years, and are still great friends.
Comment by Leslie — March 28, 2008 @ 5:12 pm
I went to three proms in the late 90’s, and they were all lame. I always looked fabulous. My favorite was a shantung plaid ball skirt in ’98 (when they were huge) with a hand-embroidered and beaded black velvet corset. The next year, I wore a totally beaded pewter column dress with matching bolero. It weighed about a hundred pounds and had spaghetti straps that cut my shoulders.
Twice my friends and I all went together, but senior year I went with a guy friend. I went to Christian school, dancing was verboten, the whole thing was LAME (but really funny). The best was the year the Spring Formal committee picked steak tartare as the entree, none of them knowing what it was.
Comment by Sara — March 28, 2008 @ 6:01 pm
My prom dress was a JC Penney knockoff of Gunne Sax that I originally bought because the school choir mandated Gunne Sax dresses for the girls when we performed. It being 1984 when I bought it, of course, it was prairie chic. It was a high-necked lavender number with the sadly classic V-ruffles down the chest and ruffled sleeves. The one small amusement factor was the itsy bitsy bustle you could create by hooking the overskirt at the back of your waist. My date was a friend of sorts that I hung out with at lunch. I went with my best friend and the date a friend of hers had arranged for her from another school. Her mother and a couple of her friends acted as combination drivers and chaperones. Her mother also got into the prom spirit by wearing her own prairie-knockoff dress to go boozing while we were dancing the night away in the San Francisco Galleria (yes, our prom was at a mall). I had more fun chatting with friends than dancing, but only because my date was crap at dancing.
I’m glad I can’t fit into that dress anymore. The superfantastic sparkly red sheath dress I bought several years and a couple of dozen pounds later for a formal event, however, is one I really ought to get myself able to wear again. I have friends who won’t stop mentioning it years later.
Comment by Lysana — March 28, 2008 @ 6:11 pm
I went to prom about eight years ago with my boyfriend and a group of my best friends. We danced every slow dance in a giant group circle, and were generally fantastically weird and over-caffeinated. People may have looked at us weirdly if the room had had better lighting. As for my date, well, I ended up marrying him, so I guess he was all right. ;)
Comment by Nariya — March 28, 2008 @ 7:24 pm
My boyfriend and I went with two other couples. We stayed at the actual prom for all of about 30 minutes. Yawnfest.
The rest of the night we party hopped and partied in the limo. Good times.
Comment by Angel — March 28, 2008 @ 9:29 pm
My late-80s prom was utterly anticlimactic, but, then, I was a scholarly nerd and not a Pretty Princess, and my family was crumbling from the fallout of my parents’ ugly divorce. As I had three younger sisters and a mom on a serious budget, my gown was borrowed from my mother’s cousin’s bridal shop. It was a poofy-skirted, short-puffed-sleeve, surplice neck, black-and-white affair, relatively stylish and current, I guess. I don’t remember too much about the evening, as I had recently moved to a new town, was very shy, and was kind of out of sorts. The dance was held in the unimaginatively festooned school cafeteria, and my mother dropped me off at 7:30 and picked me up at 10:00. No mani-pedi, no professional hairstyle, no dinner, no limo, and, naturally, no date. I spent the evening attempting to distract the pervy biology teacher (I’m 5’10 barefoot, he’s around 5’4″) from peering down my dress!
Comment by Melissa — March 28, 2008 @ 10:30 pm
I should say that I hung out with other outcast singletons, and the conversation, for teens, was reasonably pleasant. We even posed for a spontaneous group photo late in the evening. Felt a little like a library scene from The Breakfast Club, except no jocks.
Comment by Melissa — March 28, 2008 @ 10:33 pm
Prom was hilarious. My school was brand new and so when it came to prom–all bets were off. Our school pissed off a number of people because they allowed same-sex couples to get tickets. (The main reason for this was because people were getting tickets for others from different schools, actually.)
I don’t really remember much of junior prom, but I do know I spent most of it alternating between hanging out in a comfy chair and sneaking cigarettes on the balcony of the fancy country club. Senior prom was a whole other story. We started drinking at something like 6pm and I ended up making out with my date in the pool during afterprom while wearing red vinyl pants (the troublemaking pants). Fond, fond memories.
Comment by Rosemary — March 29, 2008 @ 1:45 am
“How does blue turn into pink, anyway?”
With hydrangeas, it’s something to do with the iron in the soil. :)
I am not bitter, not bitter at all, about never being asked to a single high school dance. Nope. It’s been over 25 years since I graduated, and I don’t ever dwell on the fact that I must have been so spectacularly unattractive that not one single boy felt compelled to ask me to one single dance. Doesn’t bother me at all. Not a bit.
Comment by class-factotum — March 29, 2008 @ 11:36 am
My prom turned out to a weekend to remember, thanks to my friends, and not to the prom. While coming from a very rich and stuck up high school, my friends and I were the odd ones out who were: 1)a female wrestler and member of the football team, 2)a rebel chick, 3) a soon to be stripper, and 4) me, a church going singer who just didn’t fit.
We all met up and were driven to the prom by my friend’s mother and father; dropped off at the front door in an old minivan, while the rest of the rich kids had limo rides. We all had discount dresses, including myself, who bought the first dress I found that would fit me. I was so frustrated trying to find a nice dress that would fit that I settled with a light blue halter-neck poofy dress that did not suit me whatsoever! And my hair definitely did not turn out well either. :S My drama teacher kept telling me I looked like Bette Midler. Now, as wonderful as I think Ms. Midler is, that was not what a 17 year old girl wanted to hear at her prom!
The prom was as awkward and horrible as it ever could be. But later that night, after the prom, things got better. All of us gals went bowling in our prom dresses, being able to let go and have fun our own way. We all went back to my place, drank a little too much and had a wonderful night randomly walking through the streets and the park near my house, singing and laughing. The next morning we went McDonald’s for breakfast and then to a local tattoo shop and all got piercings! I still have my navel pierced as a remembrance of the wonderful time friends can bring.
Comment by leebee — March 29, 2008 @ 1:53 pm
Ahh the prom…I had a boyfriend but for reasons which I never quite got the real truth of we didn’t go together. I had a 2nd choice however his mother picked a date for him who decided to go Paula Cole in the armpit department and which 2nd choice and I still laugh uproariously about to this day. However while I went with no date and a lovely corsage my dear Momma Goddess picked out for me I left with a corsage from a very sweet yet socially awkward friend got me and having had more fun dancing with a crush of mine. So all in all it wasn’t so bad. The dress was very princessy…like Cinderella. It was handmade with a lace overlay bodice that was strapless but had a sheer cover over my shoulders. All in a lovely purple color. It wasn’t bad persay…in hindsight I wouldn’t have spent so much but such is life.
Comment by AmazonAngelle — March 30, 2008 @ 12:59 am
I ended up going to my prom with my friend Joanna because another (thinner) friend scooped my HS crush up before I could ask him. I at least had the pleasure of seeing his eyes bug out when he saw me in my strapless ivory gown and hearing him mumble that he should have asked me.
Comment by Audrey — March 30, 2008 @ 11:42 am
Was supposed to go with a friend of mine (very cute, I kind of hoped it would go somewhere) until in the space of less than a week, he put down my height (he was 5’5″, I was 5’10; like there’s anything I can DO about that!), and I heard from a good friend he had made fun of a heavy girl we were friends with. (I wasn’t heavy then just really tall.) I called it off, and was he ever pissed.
I went with a group of casual friends (my best friend went with their leader), and a couple of us were going stag. During corsage-giving & the mandatory photos at a parent’s place, I deked into a side room to avoid any awkwardness. I tall, quiet guy I’d known casually for a few years came in after me & quietly removed his rosebud corsage for me to wear. It looked awesome with my (homemade) black velvet cocktail sheath.
The guy & I spent the whole night laughing & hanging out. There was no spark at all, but that deep sense of peacefulness like you normally only get with a really old friend. He was cute & tall & pissed off my ex-date to no end.
Comment by QuiteLight — March 30, 2008 @ 5:00 pm
My prom is actually in a month and a half. I transferred here in January, so I don’t know any guys well enough to ask yet. I was thinking maybe I just won’t go if I don’t get a date… but you guys are changing my mind. Why let boys come in the way of looking gorgeous?
Comment by gabrielle — March 31, 2008 @ 9:19 am
There is seriously a line of formal wear by a designer called Gunne Sax? Gunny sacks?
I thought it was a joke until I saw it in a few posts.
Comment by TeleriB — March 31, 2008 @ 1:02 pm
I went with the guy I’d been dating for 2 years. Most of the other girls were wearing Gunne Saxe “prairie style” dresses: small prints and lots of lace, with heels and regular pantyhose. Instead I wore an elegant but simple tea-length dress in white handkerchief cotton, with an empire waist, embroidery and lots of faggoting, accessorized with white tights and hand-painted ballet slippers (painted by my nana with flowers to match the embroidery on the dress). My boyfriend brought me rosebuds to wear on my wrist.
Comment by Kai Jones — March 31, 2008 @ 1:59 pm
Go for it, Gabrielle! Get yourself looking as foxy as possible, and knock ’em dead. Besides, half of the guys there probably won’t dance, if they’re anything like the guys I knew in high school, so the vast majority of people out on the dance floor will be girls.
So having a date really doesn’t make all that much of a difference, in the grand scheme of things.
Let us know how it goes!
Comment by La Petite Acadienne — March 31, 2008 @ 2:20 pm
Definitely go for it, Gabrielle! If I had to do it all over again (knowing in advance that my allegedly platonic date was harboring hopes of groping me at the end of the evening) I’d totally go stag and just enjoy looking gorgeous and dancing with my female friends.
Comment by Melissa B. — March 31, 2008 @ 3:29 pm
You know, sometimes you really don’t know who you are dating and what motivates them. But you can check them out if you want for free. It’s not hard to Google someone or whatever and see what they have been up to. Most of the time, it’s nothing, but it’s that once in a thousand change that there is. And if there is, wouldn’t you like to know? Me too :)
Comment by Stephanie Russo — June 16, 2008 @ 9:47 pm