Adventures in Dress Hunting, Part 2: Sifting thru the Prom(iscuous) Dresses

Caleb answered a knock at the door fairly late one evening to find a large wrapped box with Kirsten's name on it.  Besides several bags of candy and the question "PROM?" that had been cut out in large letters, there was a small box containing a single fortune cookie.  The original fortune had been removed and replaced with a slip of paper that read, "Will you go to Prom with Joe Cosby?"

In this case, Prom is a Mormon Prom that several stakes (7 maybe?) in this area put on for the Priests & Laurels.  It's always well done and attracts tons and tons of Mormon kids.

And so it began.

I gave Kirsten a budget and we set off to a store where a few of her friends and their moms were meeting.  When I saw the prices, I had to find the nearest bench to recover from the shock.  Incidentally, I joined a couple dads who had clearly exceeded their prom dress shopping limit.

But since we had driven 40 minutes to get there, I let Kirsten try on a few dresses.  Luckily the dressing room offered chaise lounges in abundance, because I had another shock.  As expected, high school girls were flitting in and out of dressing rooms, promenading in front of mirrors, asking if they looked fat.  But what I didn't expect were the type of dresses these girls were wearing and their mothers' endorsement of them.  Sleeveless dresses are one thing, but dresses (this season at least) featured huge cut-outs in the backs that came all the way around to the front and ultra-short skirts.  Ultra-short may be putting it mildly.

It brought to mind what my fabulous Grandma Layer always says when she sees someone wearing an immodest dress, "Oh, that poor girl!  She didn't have enough money for the rest of her dress!"

Except that money wasn't the issue here .  Moms were ogling over their daughters, telling them how beautiful they looked.  For the most part, these were girls whose body types -- in all honestly -- were not flattered in the least by the kind of exposure these dresses offered.

I wanted to ask the moms if they had thought about what kind of message they were sending their daughters' dates by sending them off to prom dressed like that.  I wondered if the origin for the word "prom" came from the word "promiscuous."  Or vice-versa.

Back to Kirsten.  Three stores and several hours and her agreement-to-pay-for-half-of-the-dress-we-eventually-found-because-it-was-way-over-budget later, we found the perfect dress.

Of course, we had to find fabric and add sleeves to it.  But the length and other necessary coverage were already in place.

Our beautiful princess was picked up by Joe, her prince for the evening, and they had a great time with a group of kids.  Thanks to Joe (and his parents!) for being a true gentleman and lots of fun to boot.

Mormon Prom rocks -- thanks to everyone who helped put on this awesome event.