Welcome to the Age of Promposals

You’ve rehearsed the spiel in your head. Spent too much time worrying about what they’ll say. Wonder what your options are if they turn you down. You’ve put it off and put it off. It’s getting closer to the big night and you’re running out of time. You can just go ahead and ask them, right? Not really. Promposals are kind of a big deal.

A report released by Visa Inc. indicated that promposal spending in the United States averaged $324 per household last year. As graduates-to-be find increasingly elaborate ways to pop the question, simple promposals are falling by the wayside in favour of grander gestures ranging from the minutely dangerous to the classically romantic. Here are some of our favourite ways to #prompose.

Team Efforts

Sometimes going big requires a bit of help. Call up your friends or teammates to help you make your promposal extra special. Pull a flash mob during a pep rally. Have someone blindfold and transport your promdate-to-be to an alternative location. Levittown teen Sarah Kardonsky enlisted the help of the New York Jets to create a video to prompose to her classmate. Collaborative efforts take a lot more planning than something you do by yourself, but are totally worth it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cp393vEL3uA

Song and Dance

Promposals are an excellent platform to show off your talents (or make a fool of yourself, if that’s your thing). Whether you perform alone or with a group, performances are a super bold way to ask someone to prom. The location of your show can range from the school cafeteria to outside someone’s bedroom window; it can be as intimate and romantic or as upbeat and public as you want. Bonus points if you compose an original song to pop the question!

Spelling it Out

There’s nothing quite as high-school-classic as a big, bold P-R-O-M? written in red glitter across a piece of dollar-store bristol board to be accompanied by a bouquet of roses and a nervous smile. But there’s no reason to stop at cardstock and sparkles. Large-scale mesages can make use of back-lit signs (with the business’ permission, of course), rooftops, or even pyrotechnics.

Make it an Adventure

Make the promposal an experience in itself and give your future (fingers crossed) date a taste of how much fun they’ll have with you at the main event! Candlelit dinners and helicopter rides over beaches with the important question written in the sand are major-league promposals that make good stories but may not be your style. Scavenger hunts or picnics in the park (throw a note with a food pun promposal into the basket and you’re set) are less showy but can be just as fun! These types of promposals are heavily dictated by your time constraints and budget, but with some creativity you can still create a memorable promposal with limited resources.

On top of being very entertaining on it’s own, a solid promposal adds to the entire prom experience and sets the tone for the big night. As the school halls begin to fill with gossip about who asked who — and how they asked, keep in mind that it’s all in good fun. You don’t need to ask your date with fireworks or back-up dancers in order to have a good time at prom — and if their answer is conditional on how big your promposal is, you might be better off without!