KatieZinna

Prom: an evening full of sparkling dresses, high heels, and dancing with your friends. A night almost every girl dreams about. How could this one evening possibly get better? Throw in an after-party or some raffle prizes and you have an even more amazing night.  

Each year, a Prom Committee consisting of juniors gets to choose between having an after-prom or having a Prom raffle (depending on whether they can get enough parent volunteers and the cost of venues, food, etc.). This year, the Prom Committee decided on a raffle. 

The raffle is held during Prom and begins around 9 p.m. Each Marian girl is given five raffle ticket entries with the purchase of their Prom ticket. Ranging from Stanley cups to Apple gift cards, there are a multitude of prizes to choose from.

This year, there were around 20-25 girls who won a raffle prize. The prizes consisted of $50 gift cards to places like Target or Walmart and $200 gift cards to Rowan, Madida, Apple and Kendra Scott. Girls also had the opportunity to win Stanley cups, Apple AirPods, Apple iPads and Lululemon belt bags.

Last year, senior Ava Reinert won two prizes: a $100 Kendra Scott gift card and a $100 Bluetique gift card. Reinert said, “I was extremely happy and excited that I won mostly because I wasn’t expecting to win anything.” 

Unfortunately, after Prom Queen was announced, many girls and their dates left, meaning they would no longer be able to participate in the raffle. There were a couple of times when a girl’s name would be called out only for her to have left early. Because of this, a new name was called to win the prize. 

Overall, the Prom raffle had amazing prizes and the anticipation of hearing your name called as a winner gave the evening a much more excitable and suspenseful mood.

Marian has hosted many memorable post Proms in years prior. However, due to the low interest of Marian girls, lack of parent volunteers, and high costs, Marian has not hosted a after-prom for some time now.

In the past, Marian’s after-proms were very similar to Marian’s very own Surprise Day. 

There are a multitude of venues that have hosted after-prom, including bowling alleys, Dave and Busters, and after COVID, Marian. Depending on which venue Marian’s after-prom was located at, the activities varied greatly.

At the bowling alley, girls could obviously bowl and parents would come and set up “casino” games for the girls to play. At Dave and Busters, the girls had the entire place to themselves and had free reign to play whatever games they wanted to. At Marian, the school brought in bounce houses, different types of games, a hypnotist, and food. Each after-prom also had its own prizes that girls could win as well.

After-prom originally went from 12:30 a.m. to 4:30 a.m. with the last hour ending in a Mass, but after low attendance was reduced to 12:30 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. At afterprom, all Marian girls were invited along with their dates, with no other school being allowed to attend. 

In the end, both prom raffle and after- prom seem like a blast and whatever next year brings should be so much fun.