The Perfect Prom Payday

My daughter H was on the hunt for the perfect prom dress. And she found it. It fit her perfectly; the color—a purple iridescent taffeta—was perfectly unique.

The dress was perfect, she said. It was also strapless.

Before you think mean ol' Mom put her foot down with a big N-O as a result, you have to understand my H. She's a modest kid. A strapless dress was never an option in her mind. No, the big question she had for me was how willing I would be to try to find the matching fabric needed to make the dress pass her dad's and my (and her) standards.

Seriously, iridescent purple taffeta is not a big sale item at JoAnn's Fabrics these days. I was worried. But we bought the dress. Because it was perfect.

Without going into a lot of boring details, but with some organza in both purple and pink, we got a close match. H was thrilled. I was still unsure. I asked my uber-costumer friend Paula for her opinion. She gave me the thumbs up. Well, if Paula thought it was okay, I guessed I was okay, too. Yours Truly spent a few nights hand sewing slippery fabric onto the perfect prom dress—and that's pretty tricky to do when you've got your fingers crossed the entire time.

In the end, it turned out okay. I was relieved. H was happy, and she looked beautiful on the day of the prom.

So you can imagine how we felt when she told us what happened at the restaurant before the dance. The place was full of prom-goers, teens looking their best and ready to have a great evening. While H was eating dinner with her date and their group, a mother with a 4-yr old girl came up to her and whispered that her daughter liked H's dress the best of all the prom dresses there.

Well, that was cool! H was flattered. (It is kinda hard to top iridescent purple taffeta, I suppose . . .)

But then later, before leaving the restaurant, H and the girls in her prom group headed to the ladies' room. Once again they encountered the mom and little girl. The woman, fighting tears, told them that her daughter had said that when she grows up she wants to wear a modest pretty dress like those girls. The mom thanked H and her friends for choosing to wear beautiful, modest prom dresses, and for setting a good example for her daughter.

What a perfect payday for some wonderful teens who were making good choices and were examples for good as a result, and for the moms who helped those girls look and feel elegant and special, despite what's frequently available to them on the store racks.

Raiders of the Lost Art (of Fun Dates)

A couple of weeks ago, a neighbor decided to throw a prom night for his girlfriend for her birthday, since she hadn't gone to a prom in high school. He recruited his friends, so it would feel like a real dance.

As a result, we recently found a suspicious package on our doorstep. It included a leather bomber jacket, a fedora, a whip, and a pouch. It also included instructions that sent my college-aged daughter on a treasure hunt, a la Indiana Jones, to discover who'd invited her to the prom.

I don't know what it's like in other places, but here in Utah, invitations to high school prom often include elaborate puzzles, requiring the invitee to discover who asked them.

Her first clue sent her up the canyon by our house where she found a golden ark (actually a recipe card box with chop sticks stuck through it for handles). Inside were snakes and directions to her next location, where she found a heart-shaped cake she had to dig into (ew, I was never very fond of #2 The Temple of Doom) for stones. . .and the directions to her final location. There she had to select from a wide selection of chalices to find her final clue.

Pretty cool invite to a make-believe prom for twenty-somethings, I think!

My kid responded in kind: she sent him to a friend's house (the—ahem—convenient location of "Dr. Jones's Library of Archaelogy and Antiquities"), where he found a dead monkey (okay, it was a Beanie Baby—no actual animals were killed or harmed in the making of this prom reply) and a bag of dates, with a note saying that, if he promised not to be a bad date that he should text an anonymous phone number (her sister's phone).

When he'd done that, he received a cell phone reply of a video—a closeup of my daughter's eyes blinking, with the words "SAY YES" written on her eyelids. As in: "EYE" SAY YES. (Not quite as daring as the girl in Indiana Jones's lecture class who'd written "LOVE YOU" on her eyelids, but still. . . )

Now everybody needs to go re-watch the movies so they can understand all the references!

About forty couples showed up for the fun. In the meantime, I have posted a few pictures from the actual prom. A good time was had by all. (And the birthday girl was thrilled, from what I was told.)

Final thought: the Ferrari was only borrowed. *Dang*