Prom

There are a handful of things all high schoolers must experience before graduating,

[x] Go to a football game
[x] Try out at least one sport
[ ]Prom

etc.

Well, the time has come to check off another box on this list. Prom has come and past, a celebration of all things extravagant and a culminating event for Seniors and their dates before graduating and going off into the mysterious world of (semi)independent living and college.

To be honest, I thought prom would be pretty straight forward, get a tux, get a date, have a nice dinner etc. well, apparently no one told me the amount of time (and money) prom actually involves.

"be my date?"

Finding a date for me was a complex issue. Back in elementary school (4th grade to be exact), me and my friend Maria had promised each other that we would go to prom with each other. Yes, it seemed all cute and fun back then but this little pinky promise stuck around longer than I imagine either of us expected. By the time prom season rolled around, the situation had come to look like this - maria had apparently found a potential date with a guy she met at a college orientation (and who goes to school in the area). Well, seeing this as a signal that I should go date searching I started off seeing who I should go with. Yes, I wanted to ask a guy but you can probably figure out where that went. So in the end, my problem solved itself, it turned out that the crew team was going as a group. Yes, there would be couples and such. My friend Mads asked me to prom and I readily accepted.

Happy I got a date, and Mads happy she had a date, she began dress hunting an dme searching for a limo and other prom-related things. two days later, things got complicated. Apparently Maria decided she wasn't going to prom with Mr. Tall, Blond, Built and Handsome and that she felt bad for leaving me behind. At this point, word of me going with Mads hadn't quite reached her so I had to break the news, she wasn't very happy to say the least.

Feeling betrayed, she said I had to make a decision. In the end, it was between whether having more fun and enjoying prom more with Mads and the crew kids, or going with my best friend and having an ultimately less enjoyable time in the end. Despite feeling like a total bitch for doing so, I chose to go with Mads which left Maria that much more irked. Yes, I felt horrible and me and Maria didn't speak for a few days, but in the end, things pulled through and luckily 13 years of friendship was strong enough to withstand prom drama (Prama?).

The Night of.

My group met up at a local pond for pictures, I knew all but two people there. Johnny, one of the guys, was the date of my friend Catherine, the other, Trent was Dutch's date. He came up all the way from Richmond, Virginia to come to our prom. While most of us wore the normal tux, vest, tie combo, he wore a rainbow bow tie cummerbund combo that made him admittedly the fiercest out of all of us. Trent was Dutch's gay bff while she was at Governor's School, and we all knew that h would be someone very fun and interesting and he didn't disappoint. The rest of the group included people mostly from the crew team including Southern Charm (who looked really nice in a tux), my friend Eva and a German foreign exchange student Julian. Mads wore a beautiful dark silver dress that in the light showed shades of purple-blue, my silver-vested tux complemented it well. Me and Mads chose pink and white trimmed orchids ot be our bountonniere/corsage flowers and they looked stunning in contrast to the neutral shades of our outfits. Once me, my date and everyone got all our individual corsage/boutonniere photos done and our parents some of their picture-excitement done, we began the long process of group pictures. None of us knew standing and smiling could be so tiring, but after holding a smile pretty much non-stop for 20 minutes, our cheek muscles were ready to fall off (try it if you don't believe me, haha).

After pictures and parting farewells from our parents as if we were embarking on a year-long tour of the world and wouldn't see them for that amount of time, we got in the limo and set off for dinner. Our reservation was for 7:45 at P.F. Changs, a Chinese fusion restaurant and we arrived just in time. Unfortunately, because we wanted to have a table all together, we had to wait extra because the table who took the chairs and table needed to extend our table fully was sitting idly and no doing anything despite finishing their meal. "We should give them death glares" suggested Catherine, "We have been" says the hostess. We finally sat down at 8:10, late, but we didn't really care since most of us enjoyed the dinner portion more than the actual dance portion anyway.

By 10 we left for the actual dance, we had to reroute twice because of road construction so we arrived at 10:30, not even close to the original plan of getting there by 9:30 but for our group's theme of "Classy Prom", we were just arriving fashionably late. There was a room filled with desserts and drinks and the ballroom was bathed in a beautiful blue light with an illuminated Eiffel tower against one wall in honor of the Paris theme for prom. The dance floor was packed by people grinding as per usual in modern high school dance fashion but nevertheless we, well at leasthe girls, Quinton and I danced, while most of the other guys stood awkwardly or just gently swayed, straight guys really need to learn to bust a move now and then.

At midnight everything was done, with the limo still having one hour left to go, we had our driver take us to a McDonalds and we all got some milkshakes or ice cream to finish off the night.

The night came to an end ar 1AM as we rolled back up at the orginal pick-up spot. For the girls and some of the guys, me not included, there would be a race the next (same?) day. We all hugged each other goodbye and ended the night on a high note.

A Reflection

So that was prom, simple, fun and we all had a great time. maybe it wasn't the most action packed night of our lives, but it will sure be a night I won't forget. I'll post some photos soon enough hopefully.

All the best,

JP