Y11 2025/26… come and join

[wonderstuff]

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I feel your pain. DD's mock were on paper 2 last term and paper 1 this term, so she's never actually done a full set of mocks (Except for maths where they did all 3 papers both times). I'm dreading the real thing given how bad this was and it was only half of the curriculum!

My 2 are equally not going for the enormous ones. More the sleek style. Some we saw in one shop were £650! For 1 night and there were lots of people choosing them. They were also discussing hair, fake tans, nails, shoes and handbags. Reckon those parents could be looking at £800.

we have one from stacees which is great. The other not. There returns process is non existence so be aware you may lose money if it’s not ok.

I ordered a Next Suit for DS2 last night , word of warning that they do sell out well in advance of Prom season in the smaller sizes and safer colours . DS1 had to borrow off DH last year ! but DS2 is quite a bit shorter so I’ve had to get on it this year .

Just been told school have decided to reschedule DS 7th exam this week as he is too tired. I am not surprised but sad it means they can’t be finished by Monday. It’s brutal without extra time once an extra 50% added along with rest breaks it gets close to impossible. Anyone who still thinks extra time is unfair for those who don’t get it should see the damage done for those who need it. The extra time is after all also needed to revise but I can not make 36 hours in a day.

I have been warned that Stacees dont do returns.. and lots of the preloved site show that people are selling dresses they can’t return there. That plus endless huge dresses that were £500+, worn for 2 hours etc The after party is where they actually party & drink etc so the dress it ditched by then.
lots of them you would literally never wear again ever as so ‘prom’

I managed to get a cancellation appointment for the boutique where "everyone" goes. I asked for the price range and they said £265 to £550 😱 We are going to try styles more than anything, DD dithers for days to pick anything so i cant imagine her deciding on the day. I hope there wont be too much pressure. She's so excited to go and try some dresses on!

I'm in a bother over DS's suit. He's too skinny for standard men's sizes and too tall for kids' sizes. I don't dare suggest he gets fitted for one, such is his antipathy to doing anything outside the house at the moment. I'm dragging him to a Macbeth workshop tomorrow using a mixture of bribery and putting my foot down.

That was my issue with DS1. 6ft 2 with a 26 inch waist. We ended up having to hire one from Moss Bros after A LOT of running around.

My issue with DS2 is he's short, just as skinny but with massive swimmers shoulders but unlike his brother super fussy about what he wears.

We got a prom dress on Vinted for £20 - brand is PepperMayo, which is pretty cheap anyway (£60-£70). It’s lovely. Can’t afford £100s, and wouldn’t feel right to spend that much anyway. The pressure is real though.

@ECT22 I’m going back onto vinted.
In theory I can afford but it’s ridiculous and there are better things to spend £500 on. IMO. It’s so wasteful too. Wear once dresses.. we are a very mixed demographic city comp. I hate the thought of parents going into debt over a 2 hour prom

We’re off to the prom dress shop today. You only get an hour in there and I know dd won’t commit to anything in that time!!

@NotDarkGothicMama and @Littletreefrog look at Next - they do all sorts of sizes - 28 waist up ( which you could get altered / alter yourself just with a tuck )

@eurotravel dd was telling me her friend got a gorgeous prom dress from Oxfam online.
I work in a comp in a deprived area, and while the girls always look amazing at prom, the thought of the collective spend makes me feel a bit icky.

Also just to add that they can fill out really quickly at this age - DS1 was that 6ft2 26-28 waist kid - 12 months later he’s 30-32 !

We had an hour too and I thought there was no chance, DD is so fussy however she was charging through them and decided really quickly!

Yep! We were allowed to try 5. Dd binned off three within 20mins and then we had a fun 40mins of her taking on and off the final two. £330 later and we were out (still need to pay alterations on top 🤦🏻‍♀️). I’m glad it was all done and dusted in an hour though. I couldn’t be dealing with multiple shops each weekend. It was absolutely heaving with y11 girls though!

Edited to add: they only sell one of each style to each school to avoid clashes!

We went too as I got a cancellation appointment at the local shop. I couldnt see us getting a dress as DD hated things "tooshiny", "too embellished", "spaghetti straps", 'slits"... the list went on. We were given 6 disks to put on dresses but ended up trying 9 on as the lady kept bringing them to us. On of them as really simple, nearly the same as one i got her for new years eve for 27€, but cost £295! Nothing about the dress justified the price at all. There was a full dress with a pretty corset and massive bow on the back costing nearly £600! In the end she found one she loved and was comfortable to wear, with the corset/basque and A line that she wanted. One of the cheapest ones in the store - still a lot of money but with all the stress of the exams, i felt it was right to do this and let her get excited with the dress shopping. It will need about 30cm chopped off the bottom as all the dresses are SO long. Most of them were lace up back so had some leeway with sizing but all bar a couple were xxs so it didnt feel inclusive. I felt a little sad for a girl there who was nervously joking about having to go to the gym, she looked beautiful.
They also did only one of each style per school and offered to sell us the sample for 10% off. It had a pulled thread so we didnt.

DS managed to survive Macbeth, having moaned about it furiously yesterday evening, and was even quite chatty afterwards. He quite cheerfully asked if he could have Thursday off school to study for his FSMQ Additional Maths mock on Friday. Apparently he hasn't done anything for it at all, but it's ok because he'll just watch some videos on YouTube! 🤦‍♀️ £70 at Amazon later and he's got revision books arriving tomorrow. Absolutely no to the day off though.

Sizing is an issue for us. Dd is tiny skinny. There were only a handful of size 0 dresses (they had American sizing in the shop so a UK 4) for her to try and even then she was being clipped and pulled in everywhere, we have loads of alterations to do to get it to fit tightly. So I get it with the inclusion factor, I’d say 90% of the dresses were size 6 (American) so UK 10.

Your DD would have been fine in our shop. That's something I honestly didn't think about when booking but i would now recommend to other parents to enquire about the sizing of samples when booking. It's expensive and the experience is the reason most go.

I think all in for dress and alterations were looking at circa £475. Crazy money even before ticket (75), shoes, nails etc. But then I get it, it’s a rite of passage and they’ve worked hard.

We had the dress sorted months ago currently being stored by dress place, DD has not sorted shoes so hadn't booked in for alterations have a friend who might be able to help if I am stuck 🤞
It's an Aline with an underskirt was £450 but DD will do own hair, make
up, got lovely jewellery for sweet 16th to wear and don't care about a flashy entrance so just shoes and nails which she already offered to pay for.

How much revision have your children done this weekend.
my son has done 1 hour maths, 2 hours history, 40 min science and 1 hour french. This includes Friday night, Saturday and Sunday.
it was a struggle to get him to do that. Not that motivated yet

Mine has only done art as final exam is tomorrow and she has to hand in her portfolio. She's probably done about 12 hours though and is still at it. it'll be quite a relief for it to be over but then she has an English mock on Friday which she's done no revision for so far.

DS is doing 1.5hrs every school night and 2hrs each weekend day. He also has 3hrs of intervention sessions after school during the week. In my mind it isn't quite enough but then I probably went over the top when I did mine and his November mock results had him on track. We will wait to see what he gets from the Feb mocks to see if I need to come down hard on doing more revision or if he's got it about right.