I Had a Non-Prom...Here's What Happened

I'm not a big party person. I was excited for junior prom, but it wasn't something I was devastated over losing. It wasn't something I put much thought into until the junior prom group chat made a joke about holding j-prom on Zoom.

I remember the day when we got the email saying junior prom wasn't happening. I felt a weird sense of irony, considering my dress had just arrived that day. I remember telling my parents and they seemed more outwardly upset then I was.

I pushed it to the side and focused on school.

That's when my mom made the joke over the dinner table one night. "We should have a non-prom!"

I was about to disagree before my siblings beat me to it. My sister said she would have nothing to wear, while my brother outright refused to participate. So, me being the wonderful sibling that I am, I insisted we were having a non-prom and that everyone was participating.

I would be lying if I didn't say the only reason I wanted to do it was because my siblings didn't. But, as the day approached, my sister got more excited for it. Unfortunately, my brother did not.

Junior prom would have taken place Saturday April 25th. Naturally, this had to be when non-prom took place. When the date of non-prom came around, I debated the whole thing entirely. But, it was happening. Pictures were at 5:30, family Zoom call at 6, dinner at 6:30, and the 'dance' (more on this later) happened after dinner.

My mom treated it like I was really going to prom. I blew out my hair and did my makeup, putting on my dress before finishing the hair with beach curls. I put on a pair of black heels and looked at myself in the mirror.

I'm not a big party person. Seeing myself dressed up all fancy isn't a common sight. I didn't really feel like myself.

The dress was stunning. I really wanted a yellow dress and we found the perfect one. Except, it was kind of short. I struggled with sitting the time the dress was on. But it was a beautiful dress and I can't lie. I did look nice in that dress.

My mom put on a pretty black dress and my dad put on a button down shirt and a sports jacket. My sister wore a romper and bright red lipstick. My brother, well, he didn't wear sweats. So that's a win. We took a bunch of pictures outside, even getting my brother in a few of them. We were only lacking a family photo, but we had no one to really take one.

We set up the Zoom and I got plenty of compliments from my extended family. They really enjoyed how dressed up my brother got too. We talked for a while, discussing the plans for the evening and the rest of the week, before the call ended and my dad left to pick up dinner.

My sister made the music playlist and she did fairly well. I'm pretty sure she just googled popular pop songs and put all of them into a playlist because there were some, more depressing, songs that I would be surprised if they made it to the junior prom. But she did really well considering the playlist was made in under an hour.

Then came the 'dancing'. And by 'dancing' I mean forcing my little sister to teach us all a Tik Tok dance. My brother is anti all social media. I'm indifferent to Tik Tok. But my parents really wanted us to do a family Tik Tok. So we did. And it was very funny.

My brother was not in the Tik Tok, but he did learn the dance so it counts. My sister got very annoyed at how terrible we all were at doing the dance. I caught on pretty quickly, remembering seeing my friends do this dance in school. My parents were not getting the hang of it, though my sister was the only one who didn't find it funny.

After we made the Tik Tok that would keep my mom laughing the rest of the night, I went upstairs to change out of my dress while my mom scooped some mint chip ice cream. I felt kind of sad taking the dress off. I enjoyed being fancy and special for the whole two and a half hours the non-prom was. It was weird for it all to be over. I couldn't bring myself to take off my makeup until I got ready for bed.

So that was my junior prom. Not your typical prom, but definitely a special one. I'm very lucky to have a family that went above and beyond to give me a great non-prom, even if I insisted on it as a joke. Despite my junior year taking a halt in the beginning of March, this will definitely be one of my junior year highlights.