Keep perspective this prom season

Star News

Editorials

Prom season is underway across the country.

From high school hallways to Main Street merchants, the excitement of the annual prom season is hard to overstate. There are entire industries devoted to selling products and services with the promise of making prom perfect.

From a purely economic and marketplace perspective, giving people an excuse to spend some money having fun is a good thing. The people in our communities who provide hair, nails and cosmetics services, rent tuxedoes, as well as those who sell corsages and boutonnieres all welcome the people coming in their doors during the prom season. Commerce is great and spending money at local businesses is even better.

That said, this flurry of excess needs to be balanced with perspective and a realistic budget.

According to national statistics, average prom goers across the nation will spend between $900 and $1,000 for what is, at the end of the day, a high school dance. These figures don’t necessarily include the elaborate “promposal” trends driven largely by social media — as if working up the courage to ask someone on a date wasn’t hard enough. Nor do they include any extras which can quickly drive up the price tag.

If you are in the oil oligarch, mega-yacht, private space program income group, then feel free to spend as much as you want to make your day perfect. For the remaining 99.9999% of the population any prom planning needs to be tempered with some common sense and realistic expectations.

The first thing is to set a realistic budget. Do you really want to spend as much on a dress you will wear for a few hours as you will for a semester of classes at Northcentral Technical College?

This doesn’t necessarily mean having to settle for a low quality dress. It could mean being savvy about looking for used dresses or getting a more basic dress and putting more money toward accessories with the knowledge that you could get other uses out of things like jewelry and headpieces.

Early in the process, parents need to have a serious talk with their children about what is reasonable and can be expected. Chances are the stereotypical dad who turns down the heat every time he walks in a room will have a different threshold of what is acceptable to spend on prom than a teenager.

Working out a compromise will be good for all involved.

The most important thing when planning prom is to keep a proper perspective. Yes, prom can be a big deal for some people. For most others, it is one more in a series of memories that will blur together and be reminisced about at some future class reunion. Beyond the financial aspect, it is also important to keep prom, or any other similar rite of passage activity in perspective as far as future dreams and goals. Don’t feel pressured to do anything you may regret later.

Keeping prom in perspective will help make for a fun and memorable time for all involved.