$6 thrift-store dress

My own daughter has a long ways to go before prom. But because of ModestProm.com, I have had the opportunity to help many girls and their Moms find appropriate prom dresses. At first, I naively thought this would be lots of fun. In reality, it has almost always been highly stressful and headache-producing.

The reality has been this:

* Finding an appropriate, modest, becoming dress that fits - and finding it at a reasonable price - is often difficult.

* You are almost always working with a very tight time frame, because most girls don’t start looking until they get asked, and they don’t usually get asked until a week or two ahead.

* Girls of prom-going age are exceedingly busy in the spring. They don’t have much time in their schedules to go looking, whether it’s for a dress, or a pattern and cloth. I have worked with girls who literally have only a 4-hour window of time to shop the week before prom.

* The girls tend to have very high expectations of prom. They want everything to be perfect, including their dress.
 

Establish modesty standards early on. De-stressing Prom really begins a long, long time before Prom. While your daughter is still young, it’s time to firmly establish your family standards of modesty, as outlined in For the Strength of Youth. In today's world, glamour is often equated with showing lots of skin. So being glamourous for prom can bring tremendous pressure to be immodest. If the standard of modesty is well-established, firm, and unwavering, shopping for a prom dress will be lots less stressful than if the standard is negotiable. (Who needs to be in a dressing room with a young woman who is wearing an immodest dress and wants it for the prom she’s going to in 3 days? It's better if she never even wants to try the dress on, because she knows it doesn't meet her standard of modesty.)

Set financial limits early on. Another standard to clearly establish early on is the family financial philosophy. What does the family budget allow by way of prom spending? How much will you spend on a dress, and how many dresses can be bought? One family I know had a policy that they would buy each daughter one formal dress per year, and that it could cost no more than $150. The girls knew this well in advance. They bought their one dress, and then they got creative - they traded with friends and family like crazy, and they wore their one dress with many different accessories.

Keep it simple. Sometimes prom can become so elaborate and so expensive, it ends up putting tremendous pressure on a young girl, her date, their peer group, and all the families involved (especially the moms!) If a girl spends $500 on her dress, her hair, her nails, her shoes, her jewelry, etc., and a boy spends $500 on the creative invitation, the limo, the dinner, the tickets, the tux, the pictures, etc., that’s a $1000 date. For $1000, people have pretty high expectations! Sometimes such high expectations can create so much pressure and stress, that they actually get in the way of having a good time.

I’ve watched a lot of girls go to prom. Their expectations have varied widely. I once suggested to a mom that she could save a lot of money by shopping for prom dresses off-season, in advance, for the upcoming year. "Oh no," she said, "we can’t shop in advance like that because all the girls in the group have to coordinate their dresses so they look good for the pictures." Well, if this is the case, you’re not shopping just for one girl - you’re essentially shopping for a wedding party! Having such an elaborate standard can create a heavy burden.

The fascinating thing I’ve observed is this: Girls who keep their expectations a little simpler and inexpensive, and who wear modest dresses, almost always tend to have a better time. When a girl expects perfection, she is easily disappointed - especially by what many teenage boys can reasonably offer, both socially and financially. And when a girl wears an immodest dress, she is almost always uncomfortable. She stays focused on herself, always tugging and pulling and worrying. Her date is uncomfortable too: he knows she’s uncomfortable, plus he has to worry about where he can look, whether he can put his hand on her back, etc. But if her dress is entirely modest and appropriate, the girl is more comfortable and she can focus more on being gracious to her date, seeing that he has a good time too.

Plan ahead and start early. Practical strategies can take a lot of stress off a mom, too. One of the most important strategies is to plan ahead and prepare.

The first thing I’d recommend is to start shopping way, way ahead of time. Looking ahead can save you lots of time, money, and stress.

Starting early is the best stress-reliever I know. (It can save a lot of money, too, which is also a stress-reliever!) If you’re shopping the day before and you can’t find anything, it’s a totally different experience than if you’re shopping a month before and you can’t find anything. The day before, the desperation might lead you to spend a lot more than you wanted. The month before, you won’t be as likely to, because you’ve still got time.

If possible, don’t wait until your daughter is asked to a formal dance to go looking for a formal dress. Go as soon as she turns 16, and look for bargains. Set a goal to find at least one appropriate, inexpensive dress your daughter likes early on, then keep it in the closet as a backup.

You can still shop for the perfect dress right before the dance if you want. And if you can find the perfect dress at a reasonable price, that's great. But if you can’t find the "perfect" dress, you know you’ve got a backup, and this can take a lot of pressure off both you and your daughter. She may not have a Cinderella dress, but at least she has a dress she can wear.

Consider having a formal dress "stash." My daughter is in elementary school. But every time I go to our local thrift store, I look through the formal dresses very quickly. I’ve been doing this for a couple of years, and in those few years, I’ve found about a half-dozen reasonably nice formal dresses, each costing $6-12. When I find an inexpensive dress I think might be appropriate, I add it to my prom dress stash. The girls in my neighborhood know they’re welcome to come look at my stash any time. One girl has worn several of my $6 thrift-store formals and she’s looked absolutely beautiful each time (she's pictured at the beginning of this article). For her and her mom, my stash has provided a totally stressless "shopping" experience.

Maybe my own daughter won’t ever wear any of these dresses. But for $6 a dress, I’m willing to gamble. At the very least, I like the security of knowing I’ll have something to fall back on, and I like knowing that maybe I can help another girl out. What I have to offer may be less than perfect, but it’s still something. True panic and terror is being up at midnight sewing a prom dress for a girl who needs it the next day, knowing that if you mess up, she’s hysterical and you’re toast. (I know; I’ve done it.) Knowing that you have a dress or two your daughter could wear in an emergency takes the edge off the panic and terror. It can even make shopping for the "perfect" dress more fun.

You might not go to thrift stores or yard sales years before your daughter can go to prom. But this strategy can play out different ways. At the very least, I’d definitely start shopping for backup dresses on sale right after prom season, in the spring before my daughter would be turning 16. I’d take my daughter along and go bargain hunting for a fun mommy-daughter date to go browsing with no pressure attached, and try to stock the closet with one or two inexpensive backup dresses.

Sew early. If you sew, you might consider using this same general strategy by sewing up a couple of simple dresses early on, then keeping them as backups. I’ve also found it’s a lot more fun to sew a dress the month before than it is to sew a dress the night before!

Sewing can be a great help in acquiring prom dresses, but I’ve also found that even many of the commercially available patterns are inappropriate. So I also keep a pattern stash of appropriate prom dress patterns. I have commercial patterns for a number of modest, appropriate dresses in a variety of styles. Some are vintage and some are now out of print, but at least I know I’m prepared if I can’t find anything appropriate in the season when I need to sew a dress.

I approach this stash the same way as I approach my dress stash: every so often, when I'm at the cloth store, I look through the formal dress patterns. When I see one that's appropriate, I note the pattern company and number. Then when patterns go on sale for $1.99 each, I buy all of the modest formal dress patterns I've noted down.

Help and be helped. Practically speaking, many girls will trade formal dresses. So another way to work this strategy might be to get together early on with the other moms you know, to see what their daughters have in their closets that you might be able to borrow. Of course, you’ll also help the other moms out by letting them know what you have to offer, too.