Who will reign as prom queen this season? If votes were based on the dress alone, two-piece gowns and red-carpet-inspired designs would take the lead. The two-piece dress has a secret advantage: It can be repurposed beyond the big dance.

Karen Mazer, owner of Synchronicity Boutique in Pikesville (which houses hundreds of Sherri Hill dresses, among other designers) explains, “The thing the girls like about the two-pieces is the top—they can definitely wear it again, [even] with some blue jeans and a jacket.”

For those who choose to stick with traditional prom dresses, celebrity-influenced gowns are on the rise. Francesca Ripple, owner of in Green Spring Station, says, “Prom is turning into whatever the celebrities are wearing on the red carpet.” (Think actresses seen at the SAG Awards like Emma Stone in Dior and Sarah Paulson in Armani.)

Hues of red and patterns of black and white are crowding the stores, along with mermaid silhouettes and extreme illusion mesh. (As for those plunging necklines we saw during this year’s award season? Not as long as parents are buying the dresses.)

Whatever the decision—two-piece or traditional—picking the perfect prom dress is a highly person experience.

Local designer Michelle Blanchard, who creates custom dresses with three to four month’s notice, involves her clients in the designing process to create one-of-a-kind numbers. “I’ve been doing this for many years and a lot of people come because they want the experience of picking out fabrics, colors, and coming for fittings,” she says.

Bottom line, ladies: There’s no need to travel far and wide to experience the hunt for the perfect prom dress. As Mazer advises, “Shop small, and shop local.”

For 18-year-old McDonogh senior Tyler Meagher, the hardest part
about last year’s prom wasn’t deciding who he was going to take—that
would be his girlfriend, Payton Sanchez—but how he was going to ask her.

“My girlfriend hates being the center of attention,” explains Meagher, “so I decided to make her the center of attention.”

His idea: to post a series of cardboard signs, beginning at the end
of her Towson driveway and ending many miles away at the McDonogh School
in Owings Mills.

“The first one said, ‘How Many People Do You Think Will See This?’”
recounts Meagher. Another sign was posted at the Reisterstown Road
Beltway exit.

“Finally, at the entrance to McDonogh, I had a 30-foot sign that read
‘Payton, Prom?’ with me standing under it,” Meagher says triumphantly.

Sanchez was sufficiently mortified. “All the school buses drove past
the signs, so everyone saw them,” she says. “It was definitely
embarrassing.”

Still, Meagher’s efforts were rewarded.

“Her first reaction was, ‘I’m going to kill you,’” he laughs. “But she did say yes.”

Gone are the days when going to the prom meant streamers strung up in
the gym and brownie bites baked by the PTA, where dates were arranged
spontaneously while standing in line in the school cafeteria. This teen
rite of passage has experienced seismic shifts in the past few decades,
from wedding-worthy proposals to limos, and ripped-from-the-runway
dresses.

“Prom is their red-carpet moment,” explains Marissa Grumer, senior
market editor at Seventeen. “They understand that this is their moment
to feel in the spotlight in a way we didn’t growing up.”

These days, the prom is a multi-billion dollar industry that has
spawned a slew of magazines, prom-related websites, and blogs with
important tricks, tips, and trends. (At promblogger.net, there’s even
advice on how to earn the coveted prom queen crown: “Be fun and happy.”)

But the biggest trend of the past few years is the all-important “ask.”

“The newest thing is how they ask each other to prom,” explains
makeup artist Lauren Rutkovitz, owner of A-Style Studio, a Pikesville
boutique that also specializes in event makeup. “And kids will go to any
lengths.”

Adds Grumer, “There’s this showmanship that goes on that mimics
weddings, and the guys get really into it. People come up with songs and
tap into the social media by putting them on YouTube.”

The ask is a throwback to old-fashioned romance and courting rituals,
says Josh Coonin, a Pikesville High School graduate, now a sophomore at
New York University. “At Pikesville High School it is imperative to ask
in a clever way. The pressure is on to make the girl feel really
special.”

There are two ways you can ask, Coonin says. “There is the public
way, such as spelling out the question in tennis balls on a fence as
someone I know did,” he notes. “And there’s the more private way. You
have to think about which way the girl might like.”

Coonin himself choose the public approach, sending hand-delivered
notes during every school period via a messenger to his would-be date.
“Each note rhymed, and the last one said, ‘Will you go to prom with
me?’” he says. “And then, when she came out of her last class, I was
waiting outside the door to get the ‘Yes.’”

Whether public or private, the sky’s the limit—quite literally—when
it comes to inventiveness. When Owings Mills High School student Matthew
Rosenfeld and his girlfriend, Carly Feldman, went skiing in Vermont
with Feldman’s family, Rosenfeld decided to stage his ask while on board
a Southwest Airlines flight.

“Since everyone did creative things, I knew I had to think of
something,” says Rosenfeld. He distracted Carly while her mother huddled
with the flight attendant. And right after giving the seat-belt
instructions, the flight attendant proceeded to announce: “Carly,
Matthew wants to take you to prom.”

“I think I was more embarrassed than she was,” Rosenfeld says.
(Ironically, Rosenfeld tore his ACL just before prom. “I couldn’t even
dance because I was on crutches,” he says laughing. “The build-up to
prom was definitely the best part.”)

Another common practice? Enlisting teachers as collaborators.

“One year, I had a student who knew I was doing a PowerPoint
presentation in honors pre-calculus say, ‘I really need help in asking
my girlfriend to prom,’” recounts McDonogh Upper School math teacher Jan
Kunkel. “And I said, ‘How about we sneak in a slide amongst exponential
powers?

A slide came up that said: “‘Taylor, prom? Love, Matt.’”

“Taylor was truly confused,” chuckles Kunkel. (But she said yes.)

This wasn’t the only time Kunkel was recruited to help with an ask
(once her Australian shepherd pup, Tiamo, even got in on the act), and
she’s all for it. “It’s never an inconvenience,” she says. “It’s always
so important to them. It’s a no-brainer. I don’t have any reservations
about helping—I think it’s fun.”

Yet another McDonogh student, Joshua Johns, staged his ask around a
mandatory Upper School assembly, combining then-girlfriend Madelyn
Rubenstein’s love of rubber duckies, photography, and electronic dance
music (dubstep).

“She sat in the front row at the assembly,” recalls Johns, now a
freshman at College of Charleston, “and I had made a YouTube video set
to dubstep music. The video played, and a spotlight shined on her. She
came up on stage and sat next to a 12-foot papier-mâché rubber ducky I
had made with the help of a theater teacher.”

As if that weren’t enough, Johns sealed the deal with a move that was
wedding worthy. “I got down on one knee when I asked her,” he recalls.
“And that was it.”

Baltimore businesses are catering to prom’s growing popularity, as
the end-all event—“a Cinderella moment,” Karen Mazer owner of
Synchronicity Boutique calls it—in a high-schooler’s life.
Synchronicity, where dresses are registered to ensure no two girls wear
the same frock, recently transformed itself from a trendy tweens and
teens boutique to a year-round special-occasion shop where celebrity
prom designers such as Tony Bowls stop by to press some sequined flesh
and show off their latest lines of dresses. The store was forced to
expand from three to 11 dressing rooms to accommodate all of the prom
traffic.

“How crazy is this?” asks Mazer, who sold more than 1,000 dresses
(ranging in price from $150-800) last prom season. “This is the worst
recession in anyone’s lifetime, and I’m expanding and improving.”

Indeed, some experts say that treating the prom like it’s the Oscars is just another example of excess in today’s youth culture.

“This generation of young people thrives on immediate gratification
and less boundaries,” says Park Upper-School counselor Krista Druhv.
“There is little happening in moderation.”

Even so, Druhv believes that proms serve a purpose in getting kids
ready for the next chapter of their lives—as long as it’s all kept in
perspective.

“There is something really healthy about mulling over whom to go to
prom with, dressing up, having a nice dinner, and dancing all night,”
she says, “But I know it’s possible to do that without going broke or
worrying about the superficial short-term gain of a $3,000 gown and
teeth whitening.”

And then there’s the fear that the actual event won’t live up to all
the hype. But, with the exception of poor injured Rosenfeld, most of the
students we interviewed said that simply wasn’t the case.

“The build-up was so great,” says Coonin, “that I didn’t know how it
would go. But I was on the dance floor with my friends all night, and
there was very little of what is referred to as ‘prom-a’.” (Think:
rhymes with drama.)

In the words of Pikesville High School Class of 2010 graduate, Hannah
Marcin, who served on the Senior Prom Committee, “It gives you
something to look forward to at the end of senior year. I loved high
school, and it was the grand finale. Even two years later, I still feel
like prom was the greatest thing ever.