My First Prom, Senior Year

Kacia

Prom was the bomb. (Note: With all these pics, unless you want our music to be stopping and starting over all the time, right-click the photos you want to see larger and click "Open in New Window" or "Open in New Tab". Then our post will stay open and the music won't start over when you're done looking at a picture)

It’s funny, because I thought I would never go to prom. In fact, I bought this fancy dress 2 years ago for my 16^th birthday party partially on the premise that I would never get the chance to wear a prom dress and get fancied up like that. It doesn’t really look the same as it did when I wore it on my sweet 16.

(Guys can skip this part, since it’s probably blahblahblah for you) Getting ready was fun for me

because, like I’ve said before, it’s fun to really take time to get pretty for a special time every once in a while. Plus, I wasn’t sure how much fun the actual prom would be, so I wanted to enjoy the preparations as much as I could. I got to try on pretty dresses that Sister Natalie and a teacher from Kara and Kayley’s school (her daughter’s dresses) kindly lent me, but since the red one was the general favorite I went with that one. Then Mom got me all excited when she thought of several accessories I could wear to make it look totally different, and when I went in for a haircut the lady did my hair all curly for me so I could try to learn how to do what I wanted. As I was actually getting ready a couple hours before prom, Mom, Kara and Kayley helped me out and got me out of feeling a little apathetic about it all.

Meanwhile, Lukas waited. . .

And waited…

In a rush, we took some pics before we left. I was delighted with how good Lukas looked, especially with that 13 dollar jacket (Yay for Goodwill + Aunt Josie’s tailoring + Mom’s tailoring that she's very thankful the Lord helped her with), and very pleased that my "look" had turned out the way I'd wanted. Much thanks to Mom, again. So Lukas and I jumped into Dad’s truck and drove off in that little white Ford, much to the astonishment of people that we passed on the road.

All along, I had been talking about prom to Dawn, a fellow senior who I’ve just gotten to be friends with this year, in large part due to prom. I was a large factor in her wanting to go, and she in my decision. We kept each other up to date about our dresses, I went shopping with her for some of her stuff, and I had even tested how she wanted her hair done. We met up at my since-sophomore-year friend Chris’ house (she's known him for a while too), since he lived right next to Disneyland (where prom was held), and I did her hair there. Again, Lukas waited and waited, but at least this time he had Chris to talk to. Then we all got into the truck, and drove to the Disneyland Hotel, where we would soon enter the Sleeping Beauty Pavilion. Go here and click on “360 View” if you want to really see where we were, since none of our pics really show it.

We got there, and at first we just sat there for a while. We ate some food and watched everyone who had already been there a ½ hour dancing. I had decided I probably wasn’t going to dance, so I had packed some cards from Chris’ house and was ready to take lots of photos for myself and yearbook. Lukas was being kinda shy.

But not for long…

I took pictures for probably the first ½ hour or more, or just sat around. People kept stopping me and saying “Kacia, put down the camera! This is prom, you’re not supposed to be working- you’re supposed to be dancing!!” “C’mon, this is your Senior prom, you HAVE to dance!” so I said “maybe later, maybe”. But the last straw really came when I realized that I had left the cards in the car. Nooooooooooooo! I couldn’t go back out and get them because we weren’t allowed to leave until it was over. But I eventually did dance on a simple song, where they actually tell you the dance moves as you go. I even dragged Dawn up to do it with me. Everyone lined up and followed the instructions “Sliiiide to the left, sliiiide to the right, Left foot twice, everybody clap your hands”. It’s a pretty dumb song, but it’s easy to dance to. Then, I decided that that was fun, and my friends, esp Lukas, looked like they were having fun, so I went up for another song. Then I was dancing for every song that I liked, unless I was just too tired and had to sit down. I danced in bare feet, of course, because I didn’t even walk up to the hotel with those huge heels on. I was hopping and bouncing around in place a lot, which made me very glad that I had chosen such a comfortable dress that stayed where I wanted with all that sillyness. I always danced in a group, because I was sure I didn’t want to dance with just one person (except Dawn, here). Group dancing was what mostly was going on anyways- 3 or more people would face one another, breaking off or joining as they wished. There were only 75 people there, so I supposed that helped a lot in my feeling comfortable, since I knew most everyone there. And there were lots of people that I knew from really social classes like Drama or Yearbook. I don’t even know if I would call what we were doing dancing. Because not many people really were dancing. Everyone was just doing their own thing together, with no problem about whether it was ‘cool’ or not, and more just making sure you were having a good time. Everyone was totally accepting of one another to just be happy and have a good time, which was pretty awesome and not something you see a lot. This is a link to the 10 pics from when we were dancin'

A couple of guys I know asked me to dance with them, but I didn’t want to dance as a couple, so I said no. Lukas danced with 3 girls we know, but Sabrina was the only one who he ended up dancing a whole song with.

Afterward, I tried to get everyone to leave so we’d have a good amount of time for dinner after, but we all got very distracted with photo ops.

Dawn and I had trouble getting our photo taken, until

we figured out I'd left it on Camera mode... tee-hee

On the way to Denny’s, we tried to find a good song to sing to together in the car, but it didn’t work out. We had good times at Denny’s though, because we got to talk about how fun the night had been, and talk about sillyness for a little while longer. The bummer was that 17 people trickling in (in groups) at Denny’s at 11:30pm, while they were still fairly busy, was a pain for them to try and seat. But they did it (props to them!).

After we split the bill (another pain for them!) 5 of us left in dad’s little car, this time including Dawn’s date, who lives nearby. It was really laughable trying to get everyone and everything to fit, because that car is designed for only 2 regular seats, with the 3 others meant to maybe fit small children, not tall teenage boys. And there are no side doors for the 2 back seats, so Dawn’s date and Lukas had to climb behind my seat to fit back there. It took some planning, cooperation and coordination, with Chris giving us some backup "clown car music". We chatted together, and on the way back to Chris’ we played Bohemian Rhapsody at the very best part, and had finally found a song to sing to together. In the parking lot we talked for a little bit more, and Dawn took even more pics. Finally we went home, and I was dreading being so tired that I was about to fall asleep, but I was wide awake at that 1:00am from all the adrenaline. Then, when we got home, we stayed up an hour later telling Mom all the details and showing her pics. After our stories were finally done, I started feeling ready for bed, and we parted ways at 3am. It had been a very fun night with my great pals from school, and I was so thankful that the Lord had blessed me with being able to have a fun time, without it involving anything uncomfortable or bad that would have totally ruined it for me. I may forget it in a few years, but that night I really enjoyed myself and I am very, very glad I went.