Prom: To Do and To Not

So for many 15-16 year old's in Britain right now, we are currently in Prom season as teens all over the country have reached the end of their secondary school lives. I still remember this time last year when I reached the end of an absolutely fantastic period of my life. Its safe to say I was a mess. However, I remember how excited I was planning for my end of school Prom, as I'm sure many of you currently are! I was on the Prom committee for my school so I got the opportunity to be quite involved with organising the Prom for my year, which was a brilliant opportunity and made the whole experience a lot more exciting! If I had spent as much time revising for my GCSE's as I had spent planning the Prom, I probably would have achieved A*'s all round!

Anyway, after all that planning, I did end up regretting some of the choices I made, however, I still did manage to have the best night ever, spent with some truly amazing people. I've put together a list of to do's and not to do's using my own experience to help you along the way to having the greatest night ever and celebrate the end of an era! 

Do:

1. Make sure you take spare make-up in your clutch. I stupidly only took a lipstick and immediately regretted it as soon as I arrived at my friends house for pre-drinks. It was a really hot day and my face was literally melting. I had spent so long trying to perfect my make-up for it to smudge off before I even reached Prom, so I'd highly recommend taking some basic essentials like powder and concealer to keep your make-up looking nice. I'd also recommend taking a little packet of tissues to help with any touch ups.
2. TAKE A CAMERA. And I don't mean your phone unless you have alot of free memory. To be on the safe side and make sure you don't miss any picture perfect memories, take your camera with an empty memory card. You'll get much better quality pictures and you wont have to worry about running out of memory or your phone battery dying (especially if you are going to an after party and relying on your phone battery to last until the early hours of the morning!) I took my camera to pre-Prom but left it in my car because I didn't think I'd need it at the actual Prom. I was wrong, and ended up having to take all of my photos on snap chat (rubbish quality and most of them didn't save) because my phone memory was very low. You will regret it so much if you don't capture the memories properly!
3. Make sure that your dress fits perfectly. Try it, try it again, and try it again. I had my dress custom made to fit, so the dress should have fitted my body perfectly, however, this wasn't the case and I had to get it altered. I had spent a lot more than I had wanted to on my dress and the altering, so when I tried it on after getting it resized, I just ignored the fact it was still a little tight in some places so that I wouldn't have to spend any more money. This was a bad idea as when I got in the Hummer with my friends and sat down, my dress split right on the booty. Luckily, it was on the inside so it wasn't noticeable but I was panicking so much on the way to Prom, and I struggled to enjoy my experience in the Hummer because of this. MAKE SURE YOUR DRESS FITS!
4. Wear in your shoes. If you don't want to spend most of the night in bare feet like I did (gross, I know), make sure you wear your shoes in so they fit comfortably. I couldn't last very long at all in my shoes because I had barley worn them before Prom, and it's difficult to feel like a Princess when you're either in pain whilst dancing in your glass slippers or running round with dirty bare feet. 
5. Depending on the length and thickness of your hair, I would seriously consider having your hair up. Prom falls in the Summer, when the weather will most likely be hot (depending on the British weather). Hot weather, lots of people in one space, lots of dancing and long, thick hair all over you do not go well together. It's difficult to enjoy yourself when you're worried about your make-up melting off and your hair going disgusting because you're too hot, so having your hair up will help you to stay cool. I really regret having my hair down - it looked awful by the end of the night because I was so hot, and dancing whilst I was so hot made me feel sick. I think up-do's look much more formal and are a lot more appropriate for the occasion anyway.

Don't:

That dreadful mane

1. Don't think it's a good idea to wear 26" long hair extensions to your prom. You will only spend the rest of your life regretting it whilst comparing all pictures of yourself to the lady from the Grudge. I had worn hair extensions for years prior to my prom, however, I had never gone longer than 22" which fell just under my ribs. I don't know why I thought it would be a great idea to suddenly change this for my Prom. I didn't think the extra 4" would make such a huge difference and so I didn't even try on my new hair until a few hours before the Prom, which meant that whether I liked it or not, however my hair looked with the extensions was how it was going to stay. Honestly, at the time I loved it. I thought I was so cool, with my Rapunzel length hair, however, about an hour into Prom, I regretted it so much. I was boiling hot, my head was itching, and I looked like I had been dragged through a bush (slight exaggeration but regardless, it was a bad look). My fellow extension lovers, stick to what you know, and if you can bare it, natural is probably best!
2. Don't go out of your comfort zone when it comes to heels. I though that because it was Prom, everything had to be OTT. I went for a ridiculous height of heels, and I towered over all of my friends in the photos and looked like an idiot. I couldn't walk and nearly broke my ankle as I fell down a crack as soon as I arrived at the Prom venue. Again, this made it difficult to enjoy
   the Prom, and I really wished that I had chosen smaller, more wearable shoes. 
3. Be careful when considering your dress type. I chose a white floor-length mermaid style dress
   with a little train on the back. I was initially just worried about the fact it was white, because I feared I'd spill something down it and look like a scruff, however, I did manage to avoid this luckily. It was actually the train that spoiled the dress for me because I kept treading on it and it was making me slip over. I had to spend a lot of the night carrying the bottom of my dress because it was tripping me up and I was worried that it was making my dress filthy, and I couldn't have looked very glamorous carrying round half of my dress in my arms.

   

   Shoutout to my Mum, 6 months pregnant and still whipped

4. Less is more. Stick to what you know with make-up, nails, tan etc. and don't go out of your comfort zone. For me, this mainly applied to make-up and acrylic nails. I had never had my nails done before and I decided to get these ridiculously lengthed talon stiletto nails (I don't know what I was thinking). This made it so difficult to do anything, especially make-up. For Prom, I decided to completely ignore everything I knew, and do a whole new look that I had never tried before and was very dramatic. Although it didn't actually look bad looking back, I spent much of the night feeling uncomfortable and paranoid that it looked stupid. It was also very thick and heavy, and it did smudge quite a lot because of this. so I wish I had gone with a more natural, light look.
5. Be careful when ordering from online companies! The company I ordered my dress from was DIY Dress. I found it after searching far and wide on the internet, and it had the most beautiful dresses, which all seemed to be reduced in price. It wasn't until I ordered my dress that I found a review website which stated the company was actually China based (even though it stated it was a UK company on the website) and it often presented customers with horrific replicas of celebrity style gowns, who then struggle very much to get a refund or any kind of apology. Luckily, this wasn't the case for me and my dress was beautiful even though it was sized completely wrong despite the fact I paid extra to have it custom made. It did leave me very stressed in the run up to prom, which wasn't ideal considering I was sitting my GCSE exams at the same time, so I would avoid ordering from any unknown websites and stick to what you know. Also be sure to research into customer reviews before you order from anywhere! Although I was lucky in my situation, after hearing of other people's experiences, I will never order from this company or any similar companies again.

So there we have it! My personal experiences and advice for all of you upcoming prom-goers! It may be completely irrelevant to some of you, and others may disagree with some of my tips, however, it just comes from my own personal experience and it would be advice that I would personally follow if I were to go to Prom again. I have followed this advice for similar occasions since my summer Prom last year, and it has definitely helped and enabled me to enjoy the experience a lot more. 

I hope that everyone who is awaiting their Prom's this year have the bestest time ever! I can honestly say it will be one of the greatest experiences you will have, and you will make some fantastic memories. Be sure to enjoy yourself regardless of how you look at your prom, because the most important thing is the fact that you get to spend time making memories and having fun with the important people in your lives! 

Do you have any tips for how to make the most of a Prom?

What are your best memories from Prom?

P.S. Lets take a moment to appreciate the fact that the only thing
 I have ever won was this at Prom. I wonder why...