When did Prom turn into a red carpet event?

I had an off-site prom, but a custom made gown, but I never thought I was a Hollywood star.

It was a tradition at my high school to rent RVs instead of limos. A lot easier to move around in, and you could haul loads more people.

Weird, yes.

Wow even prom became a keeping up with the Jones event. Maybe one good thing about the economic downturn is that we won't try to outspend each other into bankruptcy. God forbid the kid has to drive a Saturn to his/her prom instead of a limo.

@TEW: no god forbid either your parents drive you or you drive the old ford taurus station wagon.

As a high school senior I must say that most of the dances in general are pretty ridiculous. Especially the formal ones. I've got friends that spend 1500 dollars easy on one dance, and I just don't see the point. And it's not just the formal dances either.

Love the last line. I don't know about other schools but, at my Canadian high school, my mom made my dress and we whooped it up at the Polish Hall. It was cheap and cheesy and, gosh darn it, people liked it!

I never went to my prom...in Canada.

None of my friends went either... just saying. i did, however just get back from Cuba so i guess that kind of makes up for it :)

@stopNgoBeau: That is the coolest thing I've ever heard.

Poor Canada.

I graduated early and was therefore not -allowed- to go to my school prom, so I can't report on what upper-middle-class Texans were doing a few years ago, but I can only hope it's been dropped a few notches. I never got the pomp, being a chubby nerd as I was/am/will forever be.

I went to my senior prom in my then-boyfriend's 1986 brown Subaru GL hatchback. I still felt cool because he was 21!

@unobservant: Oops... I was thinking of my grade 8 grad when I said that my mom made my dress. I actually dropped 35 bucks on my dream gown at the Oshawa Centre and drove my friends to prom in a navy blue Taurus. Swank-ay!

Great. Kids (and their parents) have no business dropping hundreds of dollars on an event like prom.

@sponica: Driving yourself in the Taurus FTW. Ah, memories.

I wore a salmon-coloured suit jacket, and walked(!) to the prom.

Canada and all.

Or just don't go and sit in a room at the front of your house waving your fists angrily at your schoolmates as they drive by. Then play Scrabble with Nana and Papap.

Ah, memories.

@missdona: If you had worn this dress, you'd likely have felt like a porn star!

Great. I have 150 Greater Lowell Tech prom tickets that I have to eat now.

C'mon! $5 for 20! Who want's 'em?!

@harleymcc: Lemme guess 15 miles, uphill both ways in 2 feet of snow ;-)

Prom? Ohh...that is where my date gave me blue b*lls after I paid for her dress..my tux...and the whole weekend...with no relief from my...discomfort.

Save the money. Proms are really a bad thing for Americans and their balls.

@missdona:

That must have been before MTV convinced everyone in high school that they're actually living in one big reality show.

I love that organizations like the Princess Project take donations for dresses and provide them to underprivileged teens so that they can attend their prom.

I know a lot of women, including myself, that have donated bridesmaid dresses that have been worn to one wedding but was still in good shape. It is kind of cool to not only make room in your closet but give a kid a chance to have a good high school memory.

@LegoMan322: Dude, I told you to take Easy Angie, but you didn't listen. :D

There are quite a few nonprofits who give away gently used prom dresses. My boyfriend's sister found some really nice dresses that way. I don't know how you'd go about finding one in your area, but know that they do exist.

My own favorite prom dress was a black gown from the clearance rack. The dress and custom fitting combined cost about $70. (As a plus the dress was pretty classic and Hepburn-esque, so I can get multiple uses out of it without looked dated.) Not everyone can afford $70, but if you can I really recommend a classic custom-fitted clearance dress!

@Applekid: I will personally dress up, drive to you, and take you to the prom if that is your memory. (not really quite sure what sex you may be, but trust me, we can still party like it's 1979...)

@spenc938: And this is why you will live a much better financial life than your classmates.

@spenc938: Unless things have changed since I graduated three years ago, it's the $1500 "designer" dresses that always look the cheapest, too.

I'm sorry, but unless you are circa- 2001 J-Lo your neckline should not plunge to your crotch and your dress entire dress should not be held together with a rhinestone clasp. Especially if you still have your baby fat.

Our prom, in the small town of Edmeston, NY- was held in the cafeteria/auditorium/second gymnasium and was decorated by the class. No limos that I remember, and our senior prom was held late JUNIOR year because they needed enough time to take the pictures and get them into the yearbook for next year. Dresses were cheap, and no live band, just a local DJ service.

We had the cheesiest prom, my parents drove my date and I in their Chrysler LHS.

Our song? "Hold onto the Night" by Richard Marx.

(Crawling into the corner, sucking my thumb in the fetal position.... can't sleep, the memories haunt me...)

@Steven Pryor: Ah yes. When I was in HS, MTV was still playing videos.

Which makes me ancient, I know.

For the average boy, so long as he was able to score booze and get at least to third base, he'd rate his prom a success.
So liquor store owners and owners of fertile targeted loins*, it's time to stand up and do your part. It's a Financial Emergency!

Dang, I remember my prom, I rented a tux for under $100 and drove my date to the dance, what's with the spending lavish amounts of money for such? I even went to a private school, our Prom was subsidized by the school, held off site, the only expenses people had was clothing and transportation. Most kids drove themselves instead of renting a limo.....dear lord, in this day and age, parents not being able to say no to their children, leading to these lavish proms that are dying off.

And as a public service, Canooks, pipe up. Just how DO Canadians do their proms?
Do Grizzlies pay at the door, or do they get in for free? And is it proper etiquette to tap its massive 9' shoulder before cutting in on the dance floor, or is eye contact and a friendly shrug enough?

@harleymcc: Weren't you worried passing Grizzlies would mistake you for food?

@Rachacha: That's 15 Kilometers! Canada, remember? ;)

@Trai_Dep: Grizzlies? Please! Polar bears and igloos, yo!

@Trai_Dep: The problem is the punishment for a package store owner unknowingly servicing a minor is something like 40 years in a Siberian prison camp, so they're not going to help. Unless these boys know how to distill corn whiskey, they're on their own.

Good God, where do these people go to school?

I don't know a single person who paid for a limo. They all drove their parent's car or their car (which is not unusual for Florida, few were brand new), or carpooled! - in a CAR.

Dresses were generally store bought. I think mine was about $150 at the most. Then tickets, then dinner - usually at a chain restaurant but occasionally elsewhere for slightly more money. And I guess getting your hair done and shoes.

I am just baffled that girls spent a median of $750 on all this crap. Especially if they didn't pay for their meal. Bizarre.

I don't get the point of spending an average of $750 on everything. My dress was $100, and I chipped in for a limo with 8 other friends because a limo can fit a ton of people. And prom wasn't even that fun...it was kind of fun, but it was more like a social contract..it was just assumed that you would go. I went to a small private school, so everyone would know if you didn't go.

my dress was $30 on clearance, as I bought it a year before. i walked to prom. it was held in my high school's gym. beforehand, my dad cooked some brats on the grill.

some of the people in my school had custom-made dresses exceeding $5000. others rented stretch hummers and went out for $200 suppers beforehand.

i guess the value of prom depends on who you ask.

@stopNgoBeau: All the kids at my prom wanted to take hummer limos or tractors, so RVs actually sound pretty cool in comparison.

rented tux, prom held in the school's gym, drove my mom's buick. We had a couple in our school who had a bit more money so they spent big bucks, they actually looked like douches.

@ShirtNinja: ...And 2/3 a meter of snow.
Wait. English has one word, and Inuit has 30 words. Does Canadian have some middling-yet-imminently-agreeable compromise of, say, ten words for "snow"?

@Applekid: I got to go to mine, but I had to spend the whole night listening to my date talk about another girl that he wanted to go out with. Paid for everything myself, went home without so much as a goodnight kiss. Yay.

I think in high school my Tux was under $100, my dates dress was around the same amount, $50 on dinner, maybe $30 on gas, flowers and the such. Where are they getting this average number on Proms, Orange County?

BTW, i didn't need alcohol and I did get my relief that night.

I owned my own tux (bought for 15 bucks at a secondhand shop, if I recall.) I rented a vest for like 20 bucks. My date (friend, nothing special) already had her dress from her own prom.

We went in an old car, light blue, forget the model. Owned by a family friend, who also drove.

The giant wads of cash people throw down on this dance, seriously... Makes absolutely no sense.

I suspect the same industry started the ever escalating prom thing that started the ever escalating wedding thing. I blame the wedding/formal wear/events industry.

This is just a high school dance. Buy your dress at the mall and skip the limo. I am so glad I am old enough to have dodged this whole fad in proms & weddings and that my kids are young enough to have missed it on the other end.

@TalKeaton: I take back that past tense; I still own the tux. Comes in handy for formal occasions and international spy missions.

@unobservant: I like yours better. Although I guess it's a city versus country thing (Grizzlies, being smarter, always carry a change purse for tipping the limo driver).
The nice thing about Polar Bears is that, since they're already white, they simply need to don a cummerbund and a tie and they're good to go!
Err, the guy ones. I'm imagining squeezing the girl ones into taffeta is a great deal more work. Although, are YOU going to be the one telling her that her shiny dress makes her hips look too large?

Huh? When I went to my prom, I paid about $55 for the dress + whatever it cost for the ticket. My friends and I drove our own cars.

I really don't get the $750 average.

I didn't go to my senior prom but it was off site and we had a school sponsored "after party" on a boat you could go to afterwords if you wanted. I think the tickets were like $30 a person and a extra $30 for the after party. Most people didn't spend more than $100 on their dresses, granted you do spend a lot getting your hair & nails done. We couldn't take limos the school rented those big buses to take us to prom it's in the city. That way they can ensure that everyone gets there safe and gets back to school safe. Also everyone gets there at the same time so no one can complain that they missed dinner because they were late. Let me tell you that the poor student president who suggested the idea seriously got a lot of shit from students for suggesting that. Poor girl.