When I look back on my high school experience, my greatest achievement, without any single doubt, will be this Prom. Planning this night was a culmination of everything that I had learned in the previous years from planning Homecoming, a wedding, graphic designing, bulk printing, and countless other moments. It would be impossible to describe each step taken in this over a year-long process, so here are just a few memorable moments:

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One of the most important parts I learned about planning an event was the venue, so I knew we had to find the perfect spot. The search started almost a year and a half before, beginning with dozens of phone calls, email chains, and venue visits. It might have been the most overwhelming and stressful process as we competed with weddings and other events. It was a race to book the dream spot. And we lost that race. Our ideal venue had been booked while we were waiting for our school's administration to make a decision. We were upset and had no idea if we were going to get a spot on time. But as we would learn throughout this whole process, disappointment and bad surprises are inevitable. Last-minute ticket buyers. Miscommunication with vendors. Printing errors. You name it. This search for the venue would just be our first encounter with those bad surprises. Yet, these bad surprises can turn out quite fine if you play your cards right. We put our disappointment aside and kept searching, which is when we found the Art Ovation Hotel. To this day, I could not be happier that our school's administration was slow, because it ended up being perfect. The moment we toured the ballroom we all knew we had found it. We all learned a valuable lesson that day; one which we would carry for the rest of the process.

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One way Prom is different from Homecoming is that we serve dinner. Art Ovation, who made and served our dinner, required an identifier for each person so the waiters could serve the correct entree to each person (which they ordered beforehand and that is another story in and of itself). I took inspiration from the cards I designed for my cousin's wedding, with a tassel where each color corresponded to their respective entree. This was also a great way for everyone to find their assigned seats (which you can guess was another headache to figure out).

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To save some money we went homemade for many of our decorations. Although it saved hundreds of dollars it took several days and nights to print and cut the vase covers and names for the seating chart.

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We were very excited to have our very own bartender serving drinks during the dance.  This was something never done before at Prom and we wanted to make it even more special by crafting our own signature mocktail for the night.

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