As an Englishman I’m unfamiliar with this American custom.
Explain what it’s all about please., try to avoid being sarky 'cos I’m only asking
The wikipedia article covers the basics:
Was there something specific you wanted to know?
It’s basically a formal dinner and/or dance for high school seniors (12th graders). It’s often paid for by the juniors (11th graders), and often called The Junior Prom. Much to-do is given to the selection of the girls prom dress; boys usually opt for renting a tuxedo. (Nowadays, the style is for all-black James-Bondish tuxes. In my day, tuxes were often colored [magenta, baby blue, lime green]. My own was light blue, to match my girlfriend’s dress.)
Proms are usually held the last month of the school year (April or May). Many often rent limosines for the trip to/from the prom location. Some are held at the school’s gymnasium, others at hotel ballrooms.
BTW, never heard “sarky” before; interesting. 
The Prom is the big end of the year dance. In most schools, it’s a pretty big deal.
All this information is about the classic ideal of the prom, especially around the time I graduated in 1992. I hear things have changed a bit - less dates, more groups attending en masse, but the cultural idea of the Prom is still more or less intact.
Proms are for seniors - grade 12, the last grade of compulsory school in the US before going to college. If you’re younger (or older), you can go with a date of that class, but two underclassmen may not attend together.
Getting asked to the Prom is a big deal. You must be asked, or you’re a total loser. 
Generally, the guys ask the girls, although by the time I was a senior, girls were sort of half-heartedly encouraged to ask a guy, but the overwhelming majority was still guy ask girl.
The girl will then spend somewhere between $100-300 on a dress, formal. Think satin, lace, ruffles - the ideal princess gown. I’m sure in some areas they spend more. Then you order a boutonniere (two or three flowers on a pin) for your date, in a color which compliments your gown. You are also supposed to let the guy know what color you’re wearing, as often he will order a cumberbund and tie in the same color when he rents a tuxedo. He will also order a corsage for the girl. There are three types of corsage at Prom: wrist (flowers attached to an elastic band and worn on the wrist), pinned (flowers pinned below the shoulder in front) or a bouquet, which were very popular my year - held in the hand like a bride.
Many kids rent a limo, often with another couple or two to reduce cost. A limo costs in the neighborhood of $100 for the night. The limo will stop at each person’s house to pick them up, where the parents will take pictures of their kids with their dates, and often the whole group as well. Then the limo takes the kids to the dance.
The prom ticket itself is generally around $100 per couple. It may be at the school, or it may be at a hotel or conference center rented for the evening. The room will be decorated in the “Prom Colors” with balloons and streamers and glittery things. There is a Prom Theme which usually relates to a song - “Under the Sea”, “Wonderful Tonight”, “Get Your Freak On” (that last one was a joke. I hope.)
At the dance, there’s dancing. Sometimes. Some schools hire bands and others DJs.
There’s also a photographer there to take a formal, posed picture of each couple. You buy the pictures mostly in wallet sizes and trade them with your friends later. If your mom likes your boyfriend, she may buy the package with the larger picture to hang on the wall in your living room.
There’s usually also food, generally bad, and sometimes speeches by some members of the class - often the presumed valedictorian (first in class), principal (headmaster) and whoever was in charge of the Prom Committee - the group who organizes and decorates for the prom.
Then comes the Prom Queen and King. Throughout the night, or sometimes the week before during school hours, people vote for the Prom Queen and King. It’s a simple popularity contest. The Prom Queen and King (who may be dating, but often are not) are annouced and go on stage to recieve tacky plastic crowns. They then dance together for one dance - usually the theme song - with no one else dancing, and then the next song they also dance together while everyone who can convince her date to also dances.
Usually, there’s an after-prom (or many) party that is not official, and not endorsed by the school. There may be underaged alcohol consumption or sex involved. Some kids go on a several hour cruise party on a nearby riverboat. No one is expected home before dawn.
Often, the next day you’ll go out with your date (and possibly the other people in your dating party) to an amusement park, forest preserve or other activity together. Sort of an after-after-prom.
It’s expensive, it’s exhausting, it’s never as much fun as you think it’ll be, and I wouldn’t miss it for the world!
At my prom we never did Prom Queen/King, since my hometown put all three (now four) high schools together for one big prom (supposedly the largest in the state). That way if your date went to another high school it didn’t matter. Themes were inevitably sappy, and often in a foreign language to sound sophisticated.
I was at my prom for 20 minutes (the last 20, I’d had state finals for my FFA team that day and that was what was left after we got home). I’m glad I wasn’t there any longer, so I wouldn’t have had to fight the urge to vomit from the glurge over-load.
Some people are into it, I personally am not, but it’s a “tradition” or something.
Worse were the “proms” at the Christian high school I attended. Since dancing and music are sinful, our prom consisted of a terrible catered meal, milling around for an hour, and then going to an arcade (where we weren’t allowed to play any games other than putt-putt.)
:dubious: Didn’t Footloose teach people anything?
Where/when was this if it’s not a secret?
The “when” was 1996, and the where (without getting too specific and blowing my Secret Identity) was in the Midwestern US.
And no, I doubt they learned anything from Footloose. Movies are sinful, too.
I am in Canada so we did things a little bit different from your American Prom fare.
There were the dresses and the dates, however group gathering were more common. You really only had a date if you were, well dating each other beforehand.
There was a formal dance, but that didn’t seem to last very long. Everybody brought a change of cloths and once you left you were gone for the night.
Our Prom (we called it Grad) was held in the local arena, so there was the dance in one rink, roller skating in the other, a pool if you wanted to go swimming, and a theatre where there were groups performing periodically all night. There was a hypnotist, improve groups and other similar events. Once the dance ended that area was filled with games. There was the Sumo suit wresting, reverse bungee, and some others that I don’t remember. You could sign up to go to movie showings at the theatre, midnight mini putt, and “surprise adventures” As the night went on draws were made for prizes. There were some good ones too. Stereo systems, money, driving lessons. The prizes got better as the night went on. The whole thing ended at about 7am and was completely dry. It was a great night. The whole town comes together to plan it. Businesses sponsor the night and everything. It was a very neat way to do it and IMHO much better than a bunch of teenagers going out and getting drunk.
What Ludy talked about is something I knew as Dry Grad (Canadian, graduated 2000). It was held at a pool or a recreation centre, and included things like swimming and sumo wrestling (in inflatable suits), a dance, arcade games, a casino (fake money), a silent auction and other such things. This was paid for by the Parent Advisory Council and was intended to be a way for all the grads to have fun together in a supervised manner while sober (hence the ‘dry’ part). This event is generally held the week before the actual Grad (Prom for Americans).
Not really. I watched a repeat of the film “Carrie” the other night and just got to wondering what this ‘Prom’ business was all about as the kids in the film seemed to place a great deal on it…being able to go or not
WhyNot Didn’t realise that you had to pay for your tickets, I assumed it was free.
It seems to me that it’s a bit discriminatory in that you have to be asked, I mean there must be some girls/boys that are either unpopular or maybe don’t measure up to the beautiful/handsome sterotype. These latter ones could miss out even tho’ they may have the most charming personality which would beat the shit out of the glamour pusses.
Also the Queen/King thing seems a bit yucky, jeez I’d die of embarrasment if I had to get up on a stage wear a tacky crown and dance around in front of the whole bunch of classmates.
BTW Who kills the pig
Many teens thought they were gonna live or die according to how their prom turned out. Forget grades, what REALLY matters to some teens is their popularity, and proms measure popularity in a big way. Who gets asked, who doesn’t, who asks and gets a date, who gets rejected…it’s all very important to some kids.
In some areas, the kids rent a hotel room for after-prom activities, and these activities generally consist of a lot of drinking and sex, sometimes drugs as well. Parents sometimes are clueless, and sometimes will wink at these activities, figuring it’s better to have drunken teens in a hotel room rather than running around while drunk.
I am SO glad I’m not a teenager any more.
We have Proms in Australia & NZ, but they’re known as “Formals” (in that it’s formal dress).
They seem very much like their US counterparts, with a couple of minor differences:
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It’s not the be-all and end-all of your social life. A lot of people don’t go (for whatever reason), and unless someone does something really far-out there (like getting drunk and spewing all over the headmaster or whatever), it’s not a major topic of conversation after it’s over.
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There’s not really any “Formal” dancing.
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No “King And Queen” thing.
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Wibble.
No teenage kids eh, chowder?
Proms are now a staple part of British high school diet - I would guess this has happened over the last ten years or so.
I spent the first half of this year helping my daughter (16) through the Prom Dress Trauma. She found The Perfect Dress eventually (set me back £150 :eek: ) but I have to admit she looked beautiful. There was no Prom Date Trauma because she has a steady boyfriend (thank heavens!) so her “popularity” was ensured.
It goes pretty much as ** WhyNot** described, minus the flowery stuff. My daughter’s group hired a pink limousine and were soundly outdone by another group who turned up in a Big Red Fire Engine.
There were post-Prom activities which I chose not to enquire about.
And we’ll be doing it all again in two years’ time. :rolleyes:
Heh, my Senior Prom was an ideal example of my poor judgement in terms of dates, but that’s a story you’ll not hear from me without buying me a bottle of bourbon first.
As for the Prom King and Queen, my Senior year, the ballots specified that any votes for Prom Queen that did not go to female students would be discarded. This was after a well-known openly gay guy almost won the Prom Queen race my junior year (in TEXAS, no less). 
What cracks me up, is I went to my senior Prom (in downtown fracking Dallas, because it would have KILLED them to have a school dance within 20 minutes of the city we went to school in) and marveled at how the place it was held in (Plaza of the Americas) was built, being basically three or four different tall buildings with a roof and windows closing the middle part in, with a skating rink at the intersection between the buildings. Years later, I started hitting the sci-fi/anime convention circuit in that part of Texas, and realized only after the second time I had gone to A-Kon that the hotel A-Kon is held in is next door to the plaza, which was a LOT more interesting with all the resteraunts open (that’s right, we had our prom in what amounted to a big food court, with all the resteraunts closed).
But yeah, Prom is basically the Social Event of the Season, to paraphrase Firefly. It’s more important than Homecoming, and slightly less required than Graduation (and even with the sucktitude of my prom, it was still a helluva lot more fun than my graduation was). If you are a senior, you can go without a date, regardless of being a guy or a girl, but this will leave you open to pretty much the same kind of ridicule you may have been open to during lunch at school. Folks that didn’t get dates or didn’t want to usually went in groups. I pretty much spent most of the evening hanging out with the other JROTC cadets, occasionally getting dances with some of the popular girls (I was suprisingly good at this, probably because I am, while not particularly smooth with the ladies, a fairly likable guy).
After we left the prom, my group went to Bennigans for dinner and I got literally the last steak of the evening.
But yeah, the important thing about the prom is to have fun in spite of your circumstances. Hanging out with friends you meet there can be a fun way to do this. High school in the US involves a lot of dances that all work similar to this. You have Prom, Homecoming (Basketball and Football, at my school) and various other dances (my school had the Valentines Day Dance, which nobody ever went to, and our AFJROTC group co-sponsored a Military Ball with the other AFJROTC group in Dallas County, where the girls got to dress up pretty and the guys got to get snazzed up in our Air Force uniforms and sing “You’ve Lost That Loving Feelign” enthusiastically off-key.)
A couple of weeks before Prom, the prom committee set up a table in the cafeteria, where we got in line to register ourselves and our date, and order corsages (cheaper in volume). When I got to the front of the line, I announced “Betsy ——” a girl who was just about the best known at a girl’s school in town (I went to an all-boy school). Surprised faces all around. After I registered, as I walked away from the table, I thought, “Now I just have to ask Betsy.”
Good news, I worked up the nerve to call Betsy and she said yes — despite just barely knowing me. She was actually the third girl I asked. I never got past the intimidating father of the first girl (“She’s already got a boyfriend”), and the second girl, who had promised me in grade school that she would go to Senior Prom with me, reneged on her promise :mad: .
I sent Betsy a Christmas card ten years later and asked how she was, but never got a reply. 
Overall, I agree with WhyNot: It’s expensive, it’s exhausting, it’s never as much fun as you think it’ll be, but . . . well, it’s Prom.
In New Jersey, the after-prom custom is for your entire high school class to rent rooms in the sketchiest motel they can find “down the Shore,” then drive down immediately after prom and stay the whole weekend. Underage alcohol consumption, sex, and Skee-ball are integral parts of this.
Shrinking Violet Yes I have one teenage sprog who is still at school, this is his last year.
Thus far I’ve heard nothing at all about any Proms/dances/balls or whatever and to be quite honest with you I don’t expect to. My lad is a bit of a shy person, he’s had just 2 girlfriends in 3 years and NO he isn’t gay, I don’t think.
He’s far happier messing about on his PC/reading/playing backgammon and football.
I wonder about him at times
Aww I wouldn’t worry about him - plenty of boys at my daughter’s school didn’t bother with the Prom - I think some consider it a bit “sissy”.