Face it: Love it or hate it, do it or skip it, Prom is an American rite of passage (like that other thing we write about a lot).
Do you have a Prom Night story to share? Tell us!
Did you make your own pretty pink dress? Did you decide to go at the last minute with a big group of friends? Did the school give you a hard time because your date was the same gender as you? Did you lose your virginity to the captain of the football team? Did you go with your cousin? Did you go with your gay boyfriend like Trixie did? Did you trash the gym after someone dumped pig's blood on you?
We want to hear all about it! Leave us a comment below and we'll incorporate your answers into a video of what really happens on prom night. If you want inspiration or aggravation, read this story about a high school that canceled prom rather than let a lesbian couple attend!
We've written about prom garters here and prom movies here, and check out this list of most unrealistic Movie Proms ever.
You can leave text, photos or a video - use your real name or stay anonymous. We're looking forward to hearing from you! (And tell your friends).
UPDATE: Thanks to our Vancouver correspondent (the one in the fetching midnight blue number) for this awesome Prom portrait, circa 1986. Email us a your photo!
19 comments:
I'm Canadian, we called ours a Formal (to go with the spring and winter Semi-Formals).
I went with a big group of friends. There were a few who had dates but for the most part we got a table to ourselves and just goofed off all night. (My one friend brought a picture of Conan O'Brien to be her date, it was hilarious) I never even really felt pressure to go find a date.
Afterwards we went to the big drunken party, which was loud and drunken and in a field, we left shortly after and went and spent the night at a friend's house.
It was a fantastic evening but it was more about the dorky group of us than it was about sexual or dating milestones. I think we ditched at least a few of the dates before we got to the sleep over part of the evening.
I went to Prom with a group of friends. I asked a guy friend of mine to be my date. Some people in our group went with their significant other and some went with friends. Our school did not have a problem with same gender dates as two girl friends of mine didn't have dates so they went together. The evening was having dinner and hanging out with friends. The music was really bad, and when I requested a waltz the DJ told me that he was told not to play that kind of music! After prom we went to a friend's house and all camped out in the backyard and we all had breakfast together the next day.
On my prom night, two girlfriends and I decided to screw the whole thing and have a girls' night. We had sleepover and watched -- are you ready for this awesomeness? -- "Dirty Dancing" and ate chocolate peanut butter ice cream. Yeah, it sounds totally corny, but I wouldn't trade it for the best prom night ever.
I held an alternative party at my parents' house. Long-haired boys, reefer and plenty o' Boone's Farm.
I spent $300 on a dress and my date (a younger friend of mine) was an afterthought. My best friend's dad owned a limo, so he drove us. It was boring and one friend cried when the guy she had asked to accompany her (who said he had a conflict with the date) showed up with another girl. We had an after prom poker party at my house that ended when a vague acquaintance of mine showed up bloodied at our front door because he'd been physically assaulted at the public park nearby.
Prom was about as forgettable as the rest of high school. It was an event for seniors at my school, but someone in another class could go if a senior asked them. The fact I didn't have a date somehow became public knowledge, so the two senior editors of the school newspaper conspired to blackmail me into taking one of their friends (a junior).
I made the usual expenditures -- rented a tux, bought a corsage, paid for dinner, borrowed the parents' car. Once we walked through the VFW's doors, though, I didn't see her again the rest of the night. No dance together, not even a thanks for smuggling her in. She and the aforementioned friends ran together the rest of the night, while I made a killing at the blackjack tables before going home alone.
Please note: I'm not suggesting my having taken her and paid for what I did entitled me to anything. Even though it was never explicitly spelled out to me, I had a feeling that was how the night would go. Still, given the chance to live that night over again, I would rather spend the evening taking in a George Romero movie marathon than going to the supposed highlight of the senior year just because Everyone Else Was Doing It.
Went to prom all keyed up because even though my date and I went "as friends," he was really smart and funny and of course I was In Love with him. It worked out fantastically anyway--just had a great time. Loved my dress, loved the group we went to prom with; we went on the Wendella on Lake Michigan after prom with many of our friends, sat there in the freezing air, just laughing and having a blast while all the uptight kids sat inside and whined about how cold it was. Hilarious.
For prom, I made my own dress from a vintage vogue pattern out of steel grey shantung, and I loved it! I got ready with a few friends ahead of time, and I was the only one with a date. He came, picked me and the rest of my friends up, and we went. Once there, we hung out in our band-geek group doing way more sitting around and talking than dancing... prom was more about getting really dressed up and hanging out rather than dancing.
That night, my date and I had our first kiss. Awww. Cute! Afterwards, he brought me back to my friend's house, leaving us girls to have a sleepover and talk about the evening.
A funny side note- the theme of our prom was "An Evening in Paris." Apparently the student council decided that that would be a funny theme and the clueless adults said "Sure! We'll have the Eiffel Tower and lots of France-related decorations!" I had no idea about the porn "A Night in Paris" until someone told me, but we all had a good chuckle about the joke later.
Prom for me was really about showing up all the people that hated me for the past four years. I asked one of the dancers from my debutante ball. I wore my white dress and crown (I was crowned queen at the ball). None of the other couples knew how to dance (besides cheesy grinding moves), but my date was a professional dancer. People were starring at us during every song. We didn't sit down once! It was amazingly fun! We were first at a banquet hall then were taken out on lake Michigan on a boat. We danced the entire night and had an amazing time. We were just friends so he dropped me off around 4 A.M. and headed home. We're still amazing friends to this day.
I didn't have a boyfriend (ever) so I went with a friend. My mom was pissed that I'd painted my fingernails green, even when I explained that the color matched my date's suspenders. It felt like my mom wanted it to be the best night of my life and I was ruining it -- for her. If I'd thought this dance was going to be the best night of my life, I'd have killed myself. But I went because I kept thinking of that part in "Pretty in Pink" where Annie Potts says, and I quote: “I have a girlfriend who didn’t go and once in a while she gets this terrible feeling that something is missing. She checks her purse, her keys, counts the kids, goes crazy and then realizes that nothing is missing. She decided that this is a side effect from missing her Prom.” That's EXACTLY how prom made me feel! In retrospect, though, I don't think I would be thinking something was missing today if I hadn't gone.
I stressed out about my dress. Being a working class kid, my mom wouldn't let me buy a special dress -- because someone had given her a dress for free that she thought would look good on me, and would mean we didn't have to spend anything on a prom dress. Problem was, even though it fit, it was hideously unflattering in every way: it was an awful seafoam color that made me look queasy, it was strapless (bad news for a D+cup girl at a dance), and worst of all--it looked like something that would have hung in the closet on the set of Dynasty. Has this huge, weird flower-type thing attached to the hip, maybe half a foot tall and foot wide. I tried avoiding prom pictures all night. My date was polite about it, but he was clearly freaking out about being seen with a girl in such an ugly dress...
Wow! I think we really need a photo of that seafoam dress. You can put black bars on your eyes!
My prom night was going to be my first 'red carpet' night. I went to the prom one year earlier with my ex-long term boyfriend and Jason Priestley's (Yes, 90210) sister was graduating. She had this yellow dress with the lowest open back I'd ever seen. I decided to top that and had my dress made for me by a local seamstress from an electric blue satin (ah, the 80's). It was so low I had to rig a piece of chain to keep it from gaping so I didn't show my rear end cleavage. No panties that night. Mother was sweating.
Hair pulled back and so high on watermelon freeze spray (thank you Paul Mitchell circa 1986) and silver jewellery. The only thing missing was a date. Dumped by Paul Robertson before prom because the most popular girl in the school was willing to lose her virginity to him that night. I was stuck. Martin Chester, the high school Editor of the School Book invited me. Are you kidding? He bribed me with tickets to Joe Jackson if I went. Looking back, I think I was a "mean girl". Sigh. Don't worry, karma has already bitten me in the ass many times. I hosted a champagne and sushi party before and everyone thought they were getting drunk on alcohol - mum bought alcohol free cider. Suckers! Mum was dying at the price of the sushi and how much got sucked up and eaten in the first 15 minutes. I love my mom. To think she was so patient with me and my insistence to have it be THE party of 1986, I was going to seal my popularity with this party and this dress, especially after being dumped so embarrassingly. I think she's happy I'm an actress now so I don't make every family party a red carpet event. LOL.
We danced all night and drove to the beach at Stanley Park, sitting on the lap of a guy in the front seat they closed the car door on my fingers and I spent part of the evening in the emergency room getting my broken fingers wrapped. Ended up sleeping on someone's lawn. Not even one person to make out with. I am pretty sure my dress was a hit as they were still talking about it at my 10 year reunion. Go screw yourself Paul Robinson. Sorry Martin Chester.
My girlfriend's mother was a religious fanatic who thought it was improper for her daughter to stay out all night on prom night. So she refused to let her go to any of it. I spent the night in my room, listening to the local underground radio station on my little FM receiver.
I was a freshman invited by a senior. He was football player and in the popular crowd. We went to dinner and then prom. Had our pictures taken, corsage, the whole bit. There was an after party. The seniors had rented a big beach house. I wandered around the party as I couldn't find my date anywhere. Went looking room to room. I found him in an upstairs bedroom pulling a train - meaning two girls and about eight guys were in a bedroom having sex. One of his friends, that was not partaking of the festivities, saw me crying in a corner and offered to drive me home. I accepted. He was a gentleman.
I was told by my parents (not seriously, more in a humorous tone) that I could either go to college, or go to prom. I never had a boyfriend, nor did I have any interest in spending money on a dress and hair to be surrounded by the very peers who made me feel bad about myself. So I spent the entire prom evening with my family, eating a delicious home cooked meal and watching a film together. I don't regret it one bit.
I attended three of my high school proms, two with the same boyfriend and my senior prom (2005) with a group friends. The theme was a Masquerade Ball and we decided to make our own masks. After school we used Paper Mache to make the masks and then decorated them to match what we were wearing. My mask consisted of two pink flowers around the eyes to match my beautiful pink dress with beading down one side. There were a few couples in our group and three single ladies, including myself. We had a pot luck at my house so dinner would not be expensive. My dad ended up driving me and my friend because we didn’t want to drive in our dresses and shoes. The prom was at an old movie theater in town that still got used for concerts. It was “the place” to have prom but I didn't like the location as much as the other two proms I had attended.
My friend and I had asked a couple guys to go with us as friends. We had gone to winter formal with them and thought it would be nice to go to prom together. They declined. I think one of them asked a younger girl but she was “busy” that night. We were both surprised to see them show up at prom as the other excuse was that it would cost too much. My guess is that one had already got tickets and forced the other to go when the girl was busy. We greeted them at prom with a nice slug in the arm for being such jerks and declining to go with us when they showed up dateless anyway. I laugh about it now but I was quite upset that night.
When I was a senior in high school, I had a boyfriend but because he refused to go to prom (he was "above it" or, in plainer English, a total jerk), I went with a friend and a group of people she was friendly with.
The 30 minutes (maybe) which I spent at my prom were actually great. Bad music, goofy dancing, regrettable attire (oh god, especially on my part. Couldn't be avoided I suppose--would it have been prom otherwise?). I was having a good time!
So, ok, even though I was enjoying myself in my maroon dress prom squalor, it turned out that the people I went with weren't. Before I knew it, I was dragged out of the dancehall and into someone's van, which took us all to the middle of some patch of woods. The whole way there everyone spoke of how relieved they were to have left this uptight, boring scene with bad food and teachers they were sick of. And ok, the food was bad, and also I too was sick of my calculus teacher. But still! That's kind of part of the whole prom package. What did they expect?
Anyway, in conclusion, in the woods I spent the remainder of prom night, sitting on a tree stump while my cohort hallucinated on lsd. So sad! I hope I've destroyed those dress photos since then...
prom night is very exciting when I was a senior in high school .... this movie reminds me of those days .... where a lot of friends who really care about us .... This movie really is worth the watch
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