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

[Dramatic]

My daughter is in year 11 and a lot of her friends have already started shopping or already bought their prom dresses. Some have spent hundreds (£350-£500) and their parents have actually taken out payment plans or loans to get them....this seems insane to me? Are shops just ripping people off? Just seems like a ridiculous amount of money for a dress to be worn for a couple of hours.

When I got my 18yo her prom dress we went to an ex display shop and paid around £50 for a gorgeous dress.

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.

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)

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?

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

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.

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.

Charity shops existed

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

Where does the windsurfing fit it?

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.....

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'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.

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...

You have spectacularly missed the point.

I suppose you have to have a few people buying the expensive dresses in the first place so that they can have a second life on Vinted or in charity shops.

Ah but I live in a very low income area, these parents who are getting in to debt are not on high incomes, this is my point

We did JJ’s House too and I was really impressed with the whole process. We paid for the initial sample dresses to try on which was a massive help, and they tweaked hers in length and bust for free. Overall it cost about £120 and it looked far classier than some of the mega bucks super blingy dresses.

We all went back for A levels at the same school (similar age to you) but we still all really enjoyed the leavers ball.

Some people hired limos, some came in a family members sports car, others just got a lift.

We had the best time partying together and it felt like all the cliques and stresses were washed away.

Two of the people I partied with that night were dead by their early twenties; one knocked down by a drunk driver,.one due to cancer. Life's too short to not enjoy it the way you want to.

if you're child isn't into dresses and getting ready that's totally fine. If they aren't fussed by cars that's totally fine. Each to their own. But it doesn't make them more virtuous than the ones who want to make it into a big event.

Quite

I didn’t want second hand, I wanted new. Charity shopping was not fashionable then like it is now.

Well that to me is absolutely bonkers. Do people really buy £500 prom dresses when they can't afford basic stuff?! That's actually really sad, the pressure they must feel they are under. Perhaps I am being naive but I cannot imagine anyone I know spending that kind of money when we are all scratching around just trying to pay for the £25 theatre trips...

Yes we will
I have 3 daughters and such fabulous memories of prom dress shopping with the older two
For us it was the memory and the trips out and mum daughter time
Set your budget and enjoy every minute !
With our eldest we didn’t have much so hiring was the way forward
2nd we had a bit more
This time we will go all out because we can but would have just as much fun with a smaller budget
It’s not about “In my day we just signed tee shirts and decades ago”, it’s about them now amd times have changed
This is huge for our girls x

Yes, I did and don't regret a thing. Honestly MN is like an alternate universe. So many people spend that on dresses, obviously, or there wouldn't be a market for it, but nobody ever wants to admit it. So odd. Spend your money how you want to!

This. The lilies really don't need guilding.

These and mother of the bride outfits. All say “500 new only worn once for a few hours” and they sit unsold for months