We have either good or bad news for high school students and for their parents: promposals, or elaborate staged events where one teen asks another to the prom, aren’t going away, and have become as much an essential part of the prom-going experience as cummberbunds and corsages. Seeing how popular they are with teens, companies that sell or rent prom clothes have started marketing guides, promoting their brands but also reinforcing elaborate promposals as the norm.

Bloomberg News asked formalwear brands about their promposal marketing efforts. Men’s Wearhouse, for example, rents tuxedos for the occasion, and officially registered March 11 as National Promposal Day.

The marketing director for dress brand Faviana explained that the company knows that their customers like promposal videos, and that it’s a top Google search term nationwide. “Girls who are most likely going to buy our dress are also Googling promposal stories,” he explained. “That’s another way for us to find new people and have them discover our brand.”

A “prom boutique” in Pennsylvania is using the same idea, publishing an “Ultimate Promposal Guide” that happens to bring future prom-goers to their page, where they sell dresses in their retail store and online.

Parents are on the hook for at least some of this expense: in its annual roundup of prom expenses, Visa found that the amount families spent varied by region, but averaged $324 per household surveyed that had teenage children. Keep in mind that the average cost of all prom festivities, tuxes and gowns included, came to $919 last year.

Your Kid’s Prom Just Got Even More Expensive [Bloomberg]

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