Did you know proms have been going strong since the late 1800s? Typically St. Edmund and Eunice High celebrate their proms in April. St. Edmund will have its prom on April 7 and Eunice High students will attend prom on April 14.
The following, courtesy of Newspaper Metro, gives you some interesting news and facts about proms.
As the final weeks of students’ high school careers whittle down, many milestone events dot the calendar. During this time, prom is the pinnacle celebration for many outgoing seniors.
Prom, short for promenade — wherein guests parade around amid lavish fanfare — is an American tradition, but semi-formal dances and dinners for students are held throughout Canada and the United Kingdom as well.
Even though modern proms are closely tied to high school, the tradition actually began for college students. The first recorded prom took place with the all-male student body at Amherst College, who in 1894 invited women from nearby Smith College to dance and dine.
Teenagers pushed the prom tradition out of colleges and into high schools, and by the early 1940s, proms were exclusively tied to high schoolers.
Proms have remained essentially unchanged for the last 60 to 70 years, with the exception that proms have become more grandiose over the years. Largely gone are the gymnasium-held dances, and now catering halls, hotels and other top-tier facilities typically host the festivities. Perhaps the grandest prom venue was the White House. In 1975, Susan Ford, daughter of President Gerald Ford, hosted her senior prom mere steps from the Oval Office, becoming the only First Child to do so.
Promgoers and/or their parents spend sizable amounts of money on gowns, tuxedos, flowers, transportation, and much more to solidify their prom memories. Quite often prom nights turn into entire prom weekends or vacations, with after-parties and travel built into the tradition.
Greater emphasis is now placed on the drama of the “promposal,” with certain individuals going to great lengths to orchestrate the ideal way to ask a date. And while at one point attending prom alone might never have happened, many students now relish the idea of attending as groups of friends to downplay the stress on prom couples.
Thanks to social media and the connectivity of the internet, some enterprising high schoolers have attempted to make their prom experiences more memorable by asking their favorite celebrities to attend prom with them. Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Jason Derulo, Shaun White, and Miley Cyrus are all celebrities who have gone to prom with fans. Others like Selena Gomez have crashed proms. Even President John F. Kennedy crashed a prom at the Beverly Hilton Hotel when the students of John Burroughs High School had already booked the same room in which the President intended to have a fundraising dinner. JFK opted for a smaller room and let the kids have their fun, later popping in to say hello.
Proms are fixtures of the spring and summer season and events that high school students look forward to as graduation nears.