Best of Beth: Prom Dress Dilemma—Will There be Two of You?

• Editor's Note: Beth Bales wrote about 4 million columns last week, so she has this week off. We're running this "Best of Beth," which is perfectly appropriate for this time of year. The GHS 2012 prom is May 5. This column originally ran April 23, 2011.

Ah ... Prom. Boys looking handsome in tuxedos; girls stunning in their dresses, sporting great jewelry and beautifully done hair.

But those stunning dresses—frequently the subject of weeks of hunting and trying on—don’t necessarily make their way to the dance floor easily.

We were shopping at a store known for prom dresses, in Oswego, several weeks ago. My youngest daughter had found several she liked and which my middle daughter and I both liked, as well. (The sending of picture text messages to friends and the sister not with us is a story for another day!)

Then came the dreaded question: “What school do you go to?”

The answer to that query can mean breaking a girl’s heart. Because if the answer is “Geneva High School” or “West Aurora High School” or “Whatever High School” and another girl from that particular school has already bought that particular dress, girl No. 2 is sadly out of luck. Many smaller stores or boutiques will not sell that same dress to another girl, if the store has already sold it.

On one level, it’s understandable. “It’s great if you’re the first girl,” my daughter admitted. “It stinks if you’re not.”

“It’s just something we promise,” a clerk at a boutique said. “Every girl wants to know she’s going to be the only person wearing that dress.”

Frankly, in the several pre-proms I’ve attended, there’s always a dress or two that multiple girls are wearing. And just as frankly, in this highly wired world we live in, it’s not necessarily that hard to find another store carrying the same dress. My daughter fell in love with a dress, then was told another GHS girl had already bought it. We went home, I went online and I found the dress, nearby, in less than an hour. The hard part was going through all the pictures finding the exact dress.  

My daughter knows someone who got around the “no duplicates” a different way. She, too, had fallen in love with a particular gown; the clerks had accessorized it perfectly, told her she was stunning and the dress was made for her. Oops! Someone else from Geneva had already bought it. 

Subterfuge won out. A friend went in, picked out the dress and told the clerk she was from a completely different school. Transaction completed. 

Some browsing online makes it clear some girls think the duplicate dress situation is mortifying, particularly if they’ve spent hours selecting the perfect gown, or particularly if they think their gowns reflect their individuality.

And again, in the wired world of today, girls will post pictures of their gowns on Facebook (including a Fashism.com site, where people can claim “dibs,” believe it or not), to tag first claim on a particular dress.

“That’s so stupid,” a high school senior told me. “Everybody’s different. Everyone looks different, even in the same dress. Everyone has their own style.”

And they’ll all be the belle of the ball, even if they’re wearing the same ball gown.

Want to see those gowns? Geneva High School’s “Pre-Prom Send-off,” complete with royal (Viking) blue “red carpet,” is from 4 to 5 p.m. May 5, 2012, in the school’s Mack Olson Gym. People can skip the crowning of the royalty at 4:30 p.m. if they wish, and simply watch the teens first go into the school and then, at 5 p.m. board the buses, dressed to the nines, of course, on their way to this year’s prom location, the Museum of Science and Industry.