Would you/have you spent hundreds on a prom dress?

You have spectacularly missed the point.

So much easier! My son's prom suit was 4.50 from a charity shop 😁

I live in a pretty non-affluent area so I'm pretty sure there won't be many £500 prom dresses when it's my daughter's turn. It's pretty mad to me how rich folk live! Mumsnet is always a bit of an eye opener to me in that respect...

It's perfectly possible to both be very studious and passionate about all sorts of things and enjoy getting dressed up and going to a party. It's not a binary thing.

It's more about the message you are putting out there to our young people. It's far more important to value our environment and have role models that are excelling in their chosen field, rather than ones valued for their expensive tastes and made up faces.

It doesn't have to be though - are all those things really "must haves" at 16? I'm probably old (not yet 50), but we all said bye, signed our school shirts and did our GCSE's in June and by Sept 90% of us were back in the same school again to do A levels .... we didn't have gowns and jewellery and nails.....

or the balloons and sailboard for pre prom drinks and photos ar our house.

Where does the windsurfing fit it?

Charity shops existed

We did for dd. She was very ill at the time and wanted a specific dress, which I couldn’t find on vinted as it was a new design. Had she not been ill, I would have expected a compromise. Second hand these dresses fetch £200 then you can sell them on for the same price as long as it’s been looked after.

Mine was £250 15 years ago from a proper prom dress shop. My grandmother paid. But we didn’t have much access to cheaper ones on the internet like we do now.

You can get beautiful one on Whatnot or ebay for under a tenner

Guess your daughter will be doing a lot of paper rounds, if she wants a £500 dress?!

Also, isn't it a while still until "prom"? Aren't 15 / 16 year olds subject to wild growth spurts / changes in body shape and proportions? Or am I just old-fashioned?

No, I'd make her one or buy from vinted. As it happens it's her idea of hell, and while I'm a tiny bit sad I don't get to make it I know how much she'd hate being in that situation (ND and has had a terrible school experience)

My youngest daughter is 18 , when it was prom time we had decided that dress hire was what she wanted to do. A local fashion company however had a scheme in all the high schools in the town where they randomly chose 5 girls from each school to go to a special evening where they prepare orders to try on dresses and then they could keep the dress they liked. She chose a stunning dress which no doubt would have been very expensive and we were really lucky that she was chosen as we could then spend a little extra on accessories.

Bollox is it, thats a choice

All on Vinted, £70 all in and she looked and felt marvellous. But each to their own/ their own budget.

They didn’t. For a ‘proper’ prom dress - not a nice going out dress, or something you might wear to the Christmas do - from a prom/bridal retailer, you’ve done very well to get change from £500. The hair, makeup, nails etc - it’s an experience you can buy into or not. Vinted is not as cheap as you might think, and you need to consider alterations having been done. I think it’s a ridiculous concept, but I didn’t get any change from £500 and stopped counting after the dress. But nice dresses, serviceable dresses and prom dresses all come with different price tags. And the ridiculous thing is they’ll all look lovely in a bin bag with the glow of youth and enthusiasm!

"need" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here

Wow I'm glad I've got boys

I did and trust me there was a queue of mums doing the same and the appointments were booked in advance for months. It was a waste of money in some ways for example the time worn etc, but I don’t regret it, my daughter was having awful time at school and it gave her a real boost.

I know this will make me sound old but I think being a teenager in the 90s was a lot more fun than this. Going to Monsoon with your mum to look for a dress, then to New Look with your friends to get some shoes and jewellery, doing each other’s nails and make up while eating pizza at whoever’s house was nearest the prom venue, parents dropping you off after picking up your boyfriend on the way. It all sound so soulless now, trying to recreate some kind of social media dominated adult experience.

I have a long way to go before worrying about this for my 2 DDs but when I do, I think I'll set them a budget of X (probably a few £100s? Idk, a modest but not insane amount) and they can spend it as they wish for prom. If they want to blow it all on a dress, fine, but then they'll have to figure out hair/shoes/makeup themselves!

I was prepared to spend a fair bit but all the expensive ones that she tried, she hated. She ended up getting one for £30 and looked stunning

She sold it on afterwards as well 😂

my dds was @£300 but I saved a few pound weekly since she started high school so cost of dress/ hair/ tan/ makeup was easily covered after 6 years

Thats insane there is literally loads on vinted!