Prom 2011--Why Chris Joyfully Retired From All That Stuff!

 Megan's prom was on March 19th.  As every mother knows, that means prom preparation begins sometime around April 19th of the previous year.  We started looking at prom dresses at the mall.  Silly us.  We found dresses that were actually shirts.

We found dresses with missing sides.

We found dresses that were marked "Prom" that looked like they belonged in the nightwear department, or perhaps the costuming department for questionable movies.

 There were plenty of dresses that showed off one's belly button. No thank you. Who wants to worry about belly button lint all night?

 We started to feel a bit desperate.  I thought about sewing one, but Megan doesn't love me that much. It was obvious we would not be finding a prom dress in Billings.  We turned to our Personal Shopper (PS) service.  We have two PS women who live in Idaho: Ashley and Jessica.  This time we picked on Jessica.  We gave PS Jessica instructions to take pictures of EVERY dress in Idaho Falls.

Dress one is too pink.  Megan doesn't like pink. Or sunshine. Or flowers. Besides, she wore pink to the last formal dance.  Even I know wearing the same color twice in one year is a major faux pas.

Too orange-y.

Um, no. Megan wants to show her face again at Skyview on Monday morning.

Purple princess. Not Megan's thing.

Dear dress: The eighties called, they want you back!

This one on the mannequin might work, with serious modesty modifications.

Oops, no it won't; it's PINK!

This dress says "40 year old lounge singer".

This dress says "I hate it so much it comes with a scarf to cover my eyes".

Remember, the assignment was for PS Jessica to take pictures of EVERY dress.

This shopping is exhausting

and horrifying.

Finally, PS Jessica emailed a picture of a strapless black and white number.  The next step is to have PS Jessica try on all of the possibilities, take pictures in the mirror, and email them. Megan settled on this one below.  PS Jess sent a better picture, but I edited it for blog modesty.

Store promised they could add straps, turtlenecks, sleeves, and anything else we wanted and mail it to us so it arrived March 11th.  They lied. March 11 came and no dress. PS Jessica kindly but firmly encouraged them to finish it and mail it right now. They gave runaround stories and promised it would be here by May.  PS Jessica angrily, but calmly insisted they finish it and mail it right now. They blamed it on us, sun rays, us, silkworms, and uhm, us and promised it would get here by April. PS Jessica camped on their doorstep, used words like "dang" and "heck" a lot and got red in the face.   They put it in the mail.

Finally on Wednesday "the dress" arrived.  That's Wednesday, before Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of Hearts and Hands. I was so happy we now had a dress I tried not to freak out about how they added skinny straps, no turtleneck, and certainly no sleeves and we had no time left to deal with it.  I spent Wednesday doing what I could to turn skinny little pleated straps into wide unpleated straps and generally improve upon their modifications and called it good. Thank you PS Jessica! Thank you for finding a cute dress and pulling out your impressive obnoxious girl skills to get it here in time for Prom!

While waiting for the dress, we took care of all the other stuff. 

Megan choose purple shoes--

one pair for pictures, dinner, and general looking-beautiful activities, one pair for dancing. I'll let you decide which pair is which.

Pretty cute! Actually, I found these online for $31 and free shipping. See Megan? I'm still good for something!

While I was at Hearts and Hands on Saturday, Megan got her hair fancified,

and painted her nails.  I guess she couldn't decide whether to go with purple or white...

I left Hearts and Hands right as clean up was kicking into high gear (I know! My timing is fabulous!) and ran home to help Megan lace up the back of her dress.

Then we took a few full length indoor pictures,

 a few close up indoor pictures,

 a few full length outdoor pictures (it was a lovely warm day)

 a few close-up outdoor picture

 and then, unable to think of any more delaying tactics, we allowed our adorable baby to climb into Conner's truck and drive away.



Next there were more pictures of the group Megan went with.

 If I weren't her mother, I'd say Megan's the cutest girl in the group.  Since I am her mother, let me just put my prejudices aside and say "MEGAN IS THE VERY CUTEST GIRL IN THE GROUP!"

So daughters: it's been fun, but I'M DONE!  Done with the prom hair, nails, and shoes, done with  wondering how the evening is going, and most of all, DONE with trying to figure out how to find, acquire, and pay for the perfect dress for a dance that is so important to you in the moment but so meaningless a few short months and years later!

YAHOO!