Prom dresses! So the stress begins.

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My daughter has her prom in summer and so the preparations are beginning! How much do people spend on prom dresses?? I am told "by my daughter" about £500, I nearly had a panic attack!!
Please tell me this is not true?

My prom dress (13 years ago!) cost £115 and that was about the average back then..

There is a beautiful prom dress shop in Brighton with a website and the dresses are much more reasonable than £500 (and gorgeous!)

www.prettyeccentric.co.uk/clothing-c3/prom-t219

DD had her prom last year. She bought a lovely dress from John Lewis for about £65 . Shoes we got from a wedding shop for £35 and her bag was £20.
You can spend as much or as little as you want.
There are some lovely prom dresses on eBay as well - usually great condition as only worn once!

My niece got a lovely dress in Debenhams last year. TK Maxx is probably worth a look too, they often have occasion dresses.

Well we bought our daughter a 300 pound one (not very happy about the price but she looks lovely in it) just before xmas. We bought this at a prom dress shop because she has wide hips, small waist and the ones shes tried previously in places such Quiz and Debenhams ended up being where a 10 was too small but a 12 was too big - me and husband both thought it would be best to get something tailored. Saying this, I know some of her friends have dresses from Quiz and they fit lovely while others need to get theirs tailored as they are too small height wise.
I wouldn't pay anything over 300 but like I said before it wasn't very ideal to pay 300. I think the best thing is to look around at places such as Coast, Quiz and Debenhams and if not move onto prom dress shops.

Just going to add daughter has a weekend job so she is paying for some of it.

They all start expecting dresses in the £100s. Some did go to the local boutique which kept a tally of who had what to avoid duplication. However vast majority went for high street brands like Little Mistress, Phase Eight, Coast, Debenhams, Ariella, Quiz, Chichi etc. There was a Whatsapp group to log each one so noone bought same dress/colour. I'd suggest you wait and see what is the benchmark.

Thank you for all the advice, I will have to shop around. I really do not get all the fuss for prom.

DD2 has got her year 12 prom in November of this year (it’s the last year of school here in NSW before university) AND a fireman’s ball to go to in June. 2 different full length dresses needed and she doesn’t want to wear the same dress twice!

She’s got a good budget (as in not totally outlandish and she understands we don’t have much spare money) and is happy for me to make her dress for the fireman’s ball, I made her year 10 formal dress and she loved that.

Be careful buying from eBay - there are so really shonky companies in China selling very poor quality dresses.

I know the pressure is huge. I've said £100 for dress. I've said I don't care what others have spent - it has to be proportionate.

My daughter and her friends went to charity shops. All got fab dresses for under £30! They came up with this idea themselves and I was surprised they carried it through

DD has her prom this summer, too. Her dress is hanging ready in the wardrobe - she loves it, it looks stunning on her. Cost £10 in one of our local charity shops, and she couldn't wait to tell her friends about her bargain! Well worth a look!
We couldn't have afforded anything like £100. This way, too, is slightly kinder on my conscience, knowing that we haven't paid a fortune and the charity has benefitted a little. It helps having a daughter who is happy to 'march to the beat of her own drum'!

www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_3_10?sprefix=prom+dress%2Cundefined%2C188&crid=33FG2GS2CTTJW&tag=mumsnetforum-21&url=search-alias%3Dfashion&field-keywords=prom+dresses+for+teenagers

We went shopping with a budget of £300. We soon found this wasn't enough. We ended up spending £500 on a dress then there was shoes, bag, makeup and hair.

Next do some lovely prom dresses in the lipsy collection so do quiz and house of fraiser. You can get a prom dress for around £100 from these places it depends what style your daughter would like to wear.

DD is going to wear her bridesmaids dress, which was an evening dress from monsoon bought this time last year for about £80. She knows she doesn't need a second full length gown, and the bridesmaids dress is one she would have picked herself.

If she hadn't already got one I would be looking in the second hand selling groups on Facebook - we have a local group and ball gowns regularly get sold on. She would be perfectly happy in a second hand dress as she often buys clothes second hand herself.

DD1 rented hers. I think it was about £50 including bag and tiara. DD2 got hers in TKMaxx.
£500 is a ridiculous price to pay for what is a posh name for the school disco.

Avoid searching for prom dresses specifically and just look at evening wear in debenhams, house of Fraser, John Lewis. £500 is absolutely ridiculous.

A benefit of looking online for second hand (apart from the cost and they’ve only been worn once) is that if they are last season’s, she’s less likely to wear the same as someone else!

DD paid £34.99 from ASOS. She’s worn it to a few formals at university. As it was so cheap we tried washing it in the bath rather than having it dry cleaned and it’s been fine.

Both DDs got there's for less than £50 each from the Quiz sale and Monsoon sale a couple of years ago. Since then we have bought others second hand from eBay.

I will share my prom dress nightmare last year.
Dress from Debenhams - lovely, about £80, the only one DD liked, perfect. Needed taking up as DDtiny (5ft 2).

No problem (very confident) - I can sew, I even took it into school and did it on the overlocker - chopped it off, quick lesson from Textiles teacher - done easy.

Night before prom ironed dress and hung up at window upstairs. When I went to bed (relatively late for me) I noticed it had all these streak and stains down it. On investigation it was water marks from the stream iron. I remember it splurting water but just thought it would iron dry.!
Major panic - dress recommended dry clean only with some beads etc sewn in, OMG.
After much searching/googling I just decided to wash it in machine - in a pillow case on silk cycle. Was now past midnight and I had to wait wondering if it would disintegrate etc etc. All fine but I couldn't tell it the watermarks had come out really until the morning when dry. So after very little sleep it was fine and ironed it on a non stem setting with NO water in the iron (at 5am........).

All fine. Never, ever told DD.
Be warned - no steam ironing on these delicate dresses.

And if anyone had size 6/8 5ft 2 daughter struggling for dress, I have a lovely pale green off shoulder one from Debenhams - made to measure and proven delicate cycle washable.

Spent £130 last summer. From John Lewis. Looked fantastic on dd and she fell in love straight away so whole process much less hassle than I was expecting. However also bought (vertiginous) high heeled shoes and she had hair, make up and nails done. So over £200 in the end. Was worth it as dd had no confidence before and now believes she is attractive and is taking better care of herself!

Parents attended a celebration prior to the prom itself and costumes varied immensely - from high street party dresses, full length traditional dresses to the frankly weird. One or two didn't even dress up.

I'd say you just need a dress that suits your dd which could be any price range. But she'll possibly be influenced by her peers. My dd didn't have a lot of friends and didn't worry too much - she just wanted a dress.

It's just a party to celebrate finishing school spending a huge amount of money on a dress seems a bit daft unless you have money to spare or your daughter is likely to go to many similar parties in the next year or two. My ds didn't go to any of his graduation / prom events. He thought they would be too boring. As it happened the party turned out to be too interesting, there was a fight, the police were called and the venue said they'd never have another high school event. He's not sorry he stayed home. dd finishes school this year, she will probably go to prom and is thinking vintage. I'm not planning on spending too much unless she finds something really fabulous.

My DD bought hers for £6 from the charity shop! It looked absolutely stunning and I just got a call off her one day saying she'd bought it already.

This is it! She wore shoes she already had with an old purse, just paid for hair and nails.

for £500 you could buy a sewing machine and make a dozen.

I lived in Oxford, the charity and second hand shops there sold fabulous ball gowns, I'm fairly sure they still do.