Celebration Stays Strong Through City's Hurricane Recession

By the time sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds reach their senior year in high school, there’s only one thing on everyone’s mind beside getting into college: prom.  It is the celebration of a student’s hard work and the beginning of a new chapter in their lives. Money may be the last thing any party-goer wants to consider, but prom season is a time many businesses look forward to.

In the wake of the country’s financial crisis, some of those attending prom reconsidered lavishness and over-the-top expenses. And while some prom-related businesses remained strong, others noticed the affect of weakened consumer interest.

According to John Edwards, a representative at Queens’ Terrace on the Park, a banquet hall and catering facility, the reason why business didn’t decline for the hall this prom season was because prom is such an American tradition that schools wouldn’t dare cancel it due to financial problems.. The consistent number of fifty-five to sixty proms the hall counts on per season “didn’t drop at all.”

Another business that is most often associated with prom is the dress industry that expects girls to be vying for the best dress up to a year in advance.

Vanessa Bermel, a three-year veteran at eDressMe—an online and in-store retail showroom—says that prom season, which lasts from April through June, means big business. EDressMe would usually receive about “twenty to twenty-five customers a day,” said Bermel, a number that didn’t decrease during [prom] season.”

However, Bermel said that she had noticed a definite decrease in the prices of the dresses sold to eDressMe by many noted prom-dress companies such as Jovani and Sherri Hill. This may have assured the continuation of steady dress sales.

Yet not everyone has had the same luck when it comes to keeping the consumer’s interest. After Prom NYC, which sells nightclub tickets to high school seniors for after their proms, suffered tremendously.

The manager, Daryl Darren, blames the decrease in interest completely on the daunting recession. “We were down seventy-five percent in business this season, he said. “We usually sold three to five-thousand tickets a year; we were down to a thousand tickets this year.”

Some consumers also felt the pinch of economic belt tightening. “There were somany nice dresses,” said Yollyn De La Cruz, 17, a recent graduate of MillenniumTribeca High School, when asked about how she picked dresses for the senior prom she’d been planning since the end of her junior year. “But I had to keep asking myself which was the least expensive, but at the same time be a dress I really liked.”

De La Cruz, who spent about one $170 on her dress, claimed that the most complicated decision about prom came in the form of limo versus party bus.

The party bus, the latest addition to the prom scene, is a bus that can hold up to fifty people at a time, something that definitely cuts down on the cost. Although there were nineteen people in De La Cruz’s stretch Hummer limo, a choice that was made because of its attractiveness, each patron ended up paying $125 for the bus alone.

All in all, De La Cruz said that although the price tag for her prom experience was “around six to seven-hundred dollars,” the cost meant little when considering just how well her experience epitomized the celebration aspect of prom.

As Edwards said confidently, prom is going to occur regardless of financial situations because it has become a celebration staple in American culture. Some businesses have realized that people like to celebrate accomplishment and hard work, and have been able to stay strong by generating more business in the wake of the recession, while others try their hardest to survive.

“Everyone couldn’t stop talking about it and still can’t,” De La Cruz said excitedly about her prom. “And I don’t even think anyone missed it, no matter how much of a factor cost played into it.”