How to Shop for a Homecoming Dress that won’t Rob You Blind

I couldn’t wait for homecoming; everyone was talking about it and I really wanted to try my best to keep up with the “pretty girls” in my class. It’s been a tough couple of years I thought, so this was going to be my time to shine.

Everyone makes such a big deal out of homecoming. Maybe even more online than offline. I am not one of those girls that needs 200 likes on a homecoming dress photo to feel worthy; truth be told there’s only a few people I’d really like to impress and I’m #1, just before my folks, and Adam from science class.

So while other girls were spending $700 on Great Gatsby themed hairdo’s, a hundred bucks on a series of orange-fake tans, thousands of dollars on custom made dresses, and ramping up their #followback #likeforlikeInstagram social standing –I had a $300 budget for the whole entire event (and an Instagram account full of nature photos, not selfies).

Budget: $300

Even at $300 I was “ballin’”, as they say. Some girls I know only had $100 and were making up excuses not to even try.

I knew this would be a fun night with or without a giant lofty budget, so I convinced my friends we should try to make it work.

The beauty of being a “copy/paste” generation of hipsters is that the hottest homecoming dresses for 2015 can technically come from any era and in any style. For us, the opportunities are absolutely endless. And this is new; other generations didn’t have it this easy! That also means it’s a lot easier to find something on a tighter budget.

So with that in mind, we shopped around. A lot.

In the end we all found different solutions; Claire bought a sweet dress at a second-hand shop and her mom and her changed it up a little bit to make it look a little more contemporary. It came out as a complete original, she looked so beautiful.

Alice and I shopped mostly online because it’s a hella’ lot easier to shop based on price. We tried to shop in-store at a couple chain store mall shops but it was traumatizing; everything we liked, it was over $1,000.

And Cassandra stuck with the mall. Her store didn’t have an event registry and it almost seemed like she was trying to outspend us, like that was the way to “win”. Hashtag stupid much? Ironically, without the registry, Annabelle, Cassandra’s arch nemesis: Same dress. Ha!

In the end, Alice and I got a really nice deal; I paid $250, and she paid $189. We both looked great, we both were the only ones wearing our dress (no clones) because our store had an event registry. All the popular kids didn’t mock us, they sneered at us. Which where I come from is a good sign, we made them nervous. Nothing feels as good as shaming the rich kids with awesome taste and sense, even while on a budget.

And I posted my first Instagramselfie. It got 379 likes in 24 hours. And I didn’t trade like for like. Take that, Annabelle.

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