Let’s be honest. Prom has gotten to be absolutely ridiculous. What started out as a simple gathering of students to celebrate their high school achievements has grown into an extravagant blowout of epic proportions. Between pre-parties, prom itself, after parties, and the now infamous “promposals”, it is easy to say that things have gotten out of hand.

First of all, prom is a pocket-pincher to say the least. Here is a modest estimate for how much you can expect to spend.

Tuxedo rental ($100)

Prom ticket ($50)

Dress ($Only God Knows)

Flowers ($25)

Dinner ($50)

Limo ($180)

Granted the limo is clearly optional and if you want to take your date to Steak n’ Shake you can save a few bucks, but this is still not a relatively cheap night. As a boy, I will never understand for the life of me why girls spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on their dresses. I have never had the heart to tell them that I can not tell the difference between Sherri Hill and Target. But thanks to societal gender roles, guys end up evening out the bill a little bit by paying for their date’s ticket and dinner. I plan on jumping through all of these hoops not because I particularly care one way or the other, but because my date (and countless girls besides her) dream about prom night for years, and I don’t want to be “that guy” that ruins it for her.

To my next point, promposals are without a doubt the worst idea that has ever been concocted in the history of ever. I will allow the notion that at one time it was “cute”. There was a time and place for boys to go out of their ways to make a public spectacle to announce to the world that they were going to prom. But it was a very narrow window. Promposals are now as frequent as sneezes are during Spring, and to be quite frank they are just plain annoying. Nobody wants to see another lame cliched poster with prom spelled out in glitter I promise.

So please, just remember that in the grand scheme of things, prom is not that important. The sooner more people realize this, the sooner prom will become fun again.