As my senior prom approaches, I thought it would be fun to share the disaster story that describes my junior prom in the hopes that it will help others understand my opinions on the event. Although the night turned out to be amazing and unforgettable, all of the awful things that happened that day made me realize that the 'big' things I was worried about (corsages and boutonnieres, pictures, etc.) were actually irrelevant. What really matters is spending time with the people you care about, regardless of the setting.

At my school, students are still required to come to school for half of the day. During this half day, my fellow yearbook staff and I were distributing the yearbook and I somehow got held up at school for an extra half hour.

Around 12:30 PM, I leave school and am on my way home when I realize that neither my boyfriend nor I had picked up the corsage and boutonniere from the florist, so I had to drive across town to get them. It's now 1:15 PM and I haven't had anything to eat or drink for breakfast, so I find a Starbucks and go inside to order my usual (vanilla sweet cream cold brew and a brownie). As I'm looking for my wallet in my bag, I drop my phone on the ground and the screen shatters completely. The screen literally shattered and separated from my phone.

I can't begin to describe how utterly frustrated I was and still am at myself for this next part, because looking back, I barely touched my phone at prom. However, I decided that I absolutely had to go to the mall and get my phone screen fixed because apparently being a sixteen year old about to go to her first prom, a phone is a must. It is now 2:45 PM and I am still at the mall waiting to hear if my phone is salvageable. Of course, it isn't. The one shred of luck I had on this day is the fact that I was due for an upgrade, so I got a new phone that day.

So finally, at 3:00 PM, I leave the mall with a brand new phone and an escalating sense of panic because I have thirty minutes to do my makeup, hair, and get into my dress before my boyfriend comes to pick me up. Seeing as I planned to get ready over the span of a few hours in order to incorporate the imminent mistakes I would make (I'm terrible at makeup), this short amount of time seemed nearly impossible.

I was honestly convinced that the night would be ruined because of all the bad things that had already happened at this point, but I knew I would rather look halfway decent and have a fun night than look my best and be late to pictures and prom itself. I call my best friend and she rushes over. She works on my hair as I do my makeup, but I was so nervous that all of these events would lead to a terrible night that my hands wouldn't stop shaking. Fortunately, I was zipped into my dress less than five minutes before my boyfriend arrived.

As soon as I saw him (and my friends, once we arrived at the venue at which we took pictures), I found this whole ordeal laughable. What was I so worried about? No one even noticed the small smudges of makeup that were the result of many mess-ups just an hour before. The pictures taken looked great because of how happy everyone and myself looked, not because of the hours of preparation. I smiled and laughed until my face hurt, danced until my feet hurt, and had an overall great night despite all of the setbacks I encountered earlier that day.

The point I'm trying to make is that while prom is a significant occasion in high school and deserves to be recognized as such, people shouldn't worry so much about how much money they're spending to look better than everyone else. I think that if more people treated prom as an opportunity to have a night of youthful fun and embrace the end of high school, the dresses and tuxedos and other extraneous aspects that characterize prom simply wouldn't matter. I barely noticed my corsage and I'm fairly sure that I lost most of the pins in my hair while dancing, but who cares? Realizing that the memories I made that night and the people I was able to spend time with were far more important than the physical and monetary aspects of prom was humbling.

Expensive dresses, fancy venues, and looking your best are not what make prom important. In my opinion, prom is just a really extravagant way to spend time with the people you care about and make some lifelong memories. As I come to think of it now, I think I saw all of my favorite teachers, family, and friends on the day of prom, which meant the world to me and made the dysfunctional day worth it. I suppose life has a funny way of presenting silver linings even when everything seems to be at its worst.