Trey Swanson

As juniors, Naomi Frishman and Ashley Harkness walk into a maze of screens at this year’s prom venue and are filled with ideas. They hope to make the end of junior and senior year memorable. All major Grandview events are typically planned by both staff and leadership students, yet prom is an event that is especially different.

“I thought it was really cool because normally in leadership, we work with huge teams of people to do stuff,” junior Naomi Frishman said. “But it was only me, Ashley [Harkness] and our activities director, Miss Beaird.”

Every year, both a place and theme is chosen through a process unique to prom.

“The junior class president and vice president from the year before choose the location. So like me and Ashley chose the location for next year’s prom,” Frishman said. “And last year’s junior class president, vice president Sophia Lee and Maddie Hayes chose this year’s.”

Based on the venue, Naomi and Ashley chose this year’s theme.

“We wanted to do something that kind of encompassed what worked for the venue,” junior Ashley Harkness said. “Our venue has a lot of screens. So we wanted to make sure that we incorporated those screens as much as possible. We thought that a theme with a lot of pictures and a lot of memories would work well with that.”

The process of planning prom encompasses more than picking a random theme off a wall.

“Earlier in the year, we visited the venue, we found out what the venue was, we went ahead and visited it,” Frishman said.  “Then right after we visited the venue, we picked the theme and we started making the prom poster.”

Even with prom being near the end of the school year, the two juniors had to work quickly.

“We had to start planning really early, especially since we’re choosing the venue for next year, we started planning right after homecoming,” Harkness said. “It wasn’t very stressful at first, but especially as we were getting into December, we needed to start finalizing our ideas for the theme, our ideas for decorations and things like that. We had to focus more on getting everything done as soon as possible.”

Prom has a strict deadline but much needs to be completed for the event to run smoothly such as starting the planning early in the school year.  

“We started planning in about September, and we had chosen our theme, and we had finalized our ideas with the venue by December,” Harkness said. “We had chosen the venue for next year by probably the end of January. Then we finalized it. We sent out the theme, and finalized everything with that in early March.”

After finalizing the theme and seeing the venue, there was still more to be done.

“We started sending out information asking people to send out pictures and stuff like that,” Harkness said. “Now everything is coming in. So, we’re going to be grouping all those things together, calling our rental place, and making sure everything is finalized there, and then bringing it to the venue.”

As with any event, there were challenges that this committee had to face.

“Only some things will work for the venue because of what the venue looks like. So it was just a challenge to kind of come up with a theme that worked with a venue but we ended up doing that.”

In addition to the struggle to meet the needs of the venue, they needed to fit the needs of the students attending.

“We want to make sure that people are able to have more than just water at prom, but also, we don’t want people to be making irresponsible decisions,” Harkness said.

Prom is meant to be a night to remember. With that in mind, Naomi and Ashley made sure to include special features. 

“We have some cool drinks this year. We’ll have lemonade and different types of flavored water,” Frishman said. “We also have a balcony at the venue where you can go out and just hang out outside for a little bit of a break and outside.”

Even though the process of planning prom could be very stressful, there were still memorable parts to the overall process.

“I would say a memorable part was being able to drive downtown with my president Naomi,” Harkness said. “We just had so much fun listening to music just to go look at the venue and stuff like that and working through it and seeing it all come together.”