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Free prom dress event makes spring dance affordable for girls
Many young ladies dream about prom night and Wednesday night, a special event helped girls prepare for the big dance.
WEST OAK LANE - Many young ladies dream about prom night and Wednesday night, a special event helped girls prepare for the big dance.
Welcome to the Butterfly Boutique. It’s full of dresses. Some work once. Others brand new. They’re free for girls so that price won’t keep them from going to prom.
"I had an idea of maybe like a dark blue dress, like a light pink, like a red or something," said Eva McKeever. She’s an 11th grader at Martin Luther King High School. But one look at another color and she’d found her dream dress.
"The way it fit me, I think," she said of why she loves the dress. It’s her glam look for her upcoming junior prom. Her mother, Melissa Evans, brought her Wednesday evening sorry-free about the skyrocketing costs associated with prom.
"The dresses alone are hundreds of dollars. The shoes can be a hundred dollars," said Evans.
Kayla Griffin is a junior at CAPA High School for Creative & Performing Arts. She found that girls don’t have to be traditionally pretty in pink.
"I thought of Sofia the First because it was purple and had a poofy gown," said Kayla, who is pretty in purple.
She says the financial pressure of prom is real.
"Which is also one of the things that kinda pushed me away from prom. So that seems so stupid to spend so much money on a dress that you’re only going to wear once. So, I think it’s really nice," she said about the opportunity on Wednesday.
This is the second year for the Butterfly Boutique prom event held at the Promenade on Stenton Avenue in West Oak Lane. It’s a partnership with Martin Luther King High School Alumni Association and Men Who Care Germantown. The organizer says dresses are donated by individuals and small boutiques. Some were worn once. Some are new. Shoes and jewelry were also available.
"The goal here, why we call it the Butterfly Boutique, because you come in and you might not feel so great about yourself and then with the experience of our glam squad and everybody whose working with them, they come out feeling better about themselves," said Michael Brown. He’s the founder and president of the Action for Justice Collective which created and organized the event.