When the weather becomes warm and the hallways grow tense, it is a sure sign that prom season is slowly descending upon us and that it is time to put on your game face. Prom season is not a time to joke about because it can be, in fact, a traumatic and stressful period. According to High School Musical 3, prom night is the “night of all nights” and “a night to remember.” While High School Musical is known to exaggerate and glorify everything, it is true that prom is pretty important and memorable. However, while prom night seems like loads of fun, the months leading up to it can be quite the opposite. Promposals, dress shopping, corsage purchasing, and color coordinating may seem exciting, but in reality, it makes you feel like a giant toddler who just wants to wait until it gets what it wants…what it wants being: a perfect dress, a good looking date, and a great prom night. So in case any of you readers are wondering just how bad prom season can be, here are two main PROMlems that take place during this season:

The “I Found My Dress…Oh Wait I Didn’t” Case

This scenario is one of the most common and can take place in many different ways.

One example of this case would be finding a dress after hours of shopping and finally feeling like you’ve found the dress that makes you feel and look perfect. However, when you try it on a month later and look in the mirror, you realize that you look like a stuffed animal that has been shoved into a sequined blanket. This is a classic example of “I found my dress…oh I wait I didn’t”.

Another example of this case would be falling in love with and buying a specific dress and realizing someone is already wearing it. The senior class this year actually has a lot of experience with this problem. While we did create a prom Facebook page to avoid the possibility of people wearing the same dress, it didn’t always work out for the non-social media people. In fact, Gabby G. ’18, bought a beautiful pink and shiny dress that she fell in love with and posted on the Facebook page. However, about a day later she was told that The Blotter’s very own Co Editor in Chief, Keely C. ’18, had already purchased and tailored the same exact dress but didn’t have the social media to post it. The two conversed about their love for the same dress and Gabby, distraught and nervous about her time constraint, decided to keep looking for other dresses. Luckily, she found a dress that also looks amazing and that she is planning on wearing. Keely remarks on this stressful experience with a calm attitude, “I don’t really care about prom a whole lot so it honestly didn’t matter to me if Gab and I had the same dress,” while Gabby still considers it a stressful topic to talk about, “I was annoyed because I had finally made a decision and then learned that I had to either wear the same dress as someone or give it up right after I got really excited about it.” There are many other ways to fall into this trap of thinking you’ve “said yes to the dress” and then realizing that you hate it. Lets just say that picking out your “right” dress isn’t as easy as it is on “Say Yes to the Dress” or “I Found the Gown” on TLC. As Taylor from High School Musical says, “no one better wear the same dress as me”.

The Promposals Case

This scenario is also one of the most common and can be stressful in multiple ways. The first layer of stress relating to promposals is the timing. It is important to not be the first promposal but also not to be the last. Promposals are like a rainstorm. It starts off with a drizzle, one or two promposals, and that turns into a storm, everyone is asked to prom around the same time. This creates another issue with promposals. You don’t want to be over the top but you also don’t want your promposal to go unrecognized. Finding the perfect balance of making it known but not sharing the news to the whole school can be stressful and it usually ends up involving some type of low key poster. Lastly, promposals are stressful because you always having FOMO (fear of missing out). During every lunch period, community time, and PE period I am always worried that someone is getting promposed to and I am missing it. It is always crucial to find out when and where your friends are getting asked so you can get a front row seat and have your camera ready.

So as we head into mid-May, we, at The Blotter, wish you the best of luck with any PROMlems you may run into in the next month.