By Abby Patkin and Anastasiya Vasilyeva
Every year, members of the junior and senior class race to come up with clever, unique ways of asking their dates to their semi formal and prom, respectively. This year, upperclassmen utilized social networks, technology, baked goods, and even animals to get the message across to their prospective dates.
“I asked my friend from North to prom on Facebook after being (sadly) turned down by guy friends,” senior Hayley Goldstein said. “He said yes!”
Junior Dylan Cloud said he used a much more relaxed approach, with positive results:
“I just kind of asked her and she was like: ‘yeah, okay’.”
Others, like junior Connor Donahue, turned to technology to ask their dates. Donahue used an edited image to ask his date, Rosalie Goldberg, to semi.
One student athlete said she was asked by her date at track practice.
Other students got even more creative, sometimes involving living props.
“He asked me with a pet beta fish! (His name is now Loki and he’s living life swimmingly),” sophomore Kristen Magliozzi said of her prom date, senior Max Agress’s, promposal.
Junior Joey Cohen even used a pet dog, Percy, to ask his date, junior Caitlain McDonald.
Meanwhile, others chose a different route: baked goods.
“I just wanted to go with someone who I knew pretty well…so I asked one of her closer friends to arrange a way for me to ask her in a more special way, and then…she and her friend met for lunch and [the friend] said ‘you should ask her right before we do that’ so I got a cake and I put her initials in icing on the top of it and on the bottom of it I put the word ‘semi’ with a question-mark after it,” junior Harry Nanthakumar said of his semi proposal to junior Minh-An Quinn. “So around twelve I waited around the corner from her house while she got ready to go to lunch with the friend she had arranged with. She came out, and I asked her, and she said yes.”
“I didn’t expect someone to ask me in that way,” Quinn said. “I’m not really big on…promposals, so I thought it was just really nice the way he did it.”
“I was pretty nervous right before I asked her, but I think the friend did a good job of telling me it would be okay. She did a good job of encouraging me,” Nanthakumar said.
“I think a lot of people ask each other in big ways,” Quinn said. “I think it’s kind of a tradition to do something special.”
“I didn’t want it to be so generic,” Nanthakumar said. “I was trying to go for something she would probably remember.”
Similarly, two friends, sophomore Gabryela Sinclair and sophomore Audrey Hooker, were also asked with a cake.
“Our boyfriends made a cake to ask us together,” they said.
Junior Jordy Cohen asked his date, junior Charlotte Huth, to semi by writing his question in the sand with seaweed on a family vacation to Cancun back in February.
UPDATE (12:05 PM, 05/26/13): A previous version of this story contained inaccurate quotations. Denebola has removed the quotations, and is investigating how they came to be included in the story.
