For some high-schoolers, the senior prom can become a high-priced production.
With elaborately staged “promposals,” lavish before-and-after parties, “Say Yes to the Dress”-esque expensive gowns, the prom can resemble red carpet events. One Philadelphia mother spent $27,000 on a pre-prom send-off party that included a Cinderella-themed castle.
It’s easy to roll our eyes at one-upmanship spending sprees for proms, but there is a lot of peer pressure to upscale many of life’s special occasions.
People treat birthdays like galas and weddings like royal coronations. Pre-wedding events can cost thousands for invitees, and gender-reveal parties have gotten so outrageously extravagant that one involving pyrotechnics accidentally started a 47,000-acre wildfire in Arizona.
So, it’s no wonder that some teens want to go all out for their prom, and that some parents are willing to serve as their accomplices. Those are the conspicuous consumption values and expectations we are passing on to our children.
The extraordinary spending for proms, in particular, can alienate the less fortunate and overshadow the gathering’s intent, which is to enjoy people’s company in a shared experience, according to Jay Zagorsky, a professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business.
Zagorsky created a prom indexto track the costs of this event over the years — and what he found surprised him.
As an economist focused on wealth and income, he said it’s important to examine consumer spending habits, including teenagers’ financial choices. But his interest in researching prom inflation wasn’t just academic.
“I have three children,” he said. “When the third child went to the prom, I was just like, ‘Seriously?’”
Even knowing what to expect didn’t lessen the sticker shock.
There are lots of anecdotal stories floating all over the web, but there’s very little data on the prom, he said.
To estimate the changing costs of a high school prom, he used the closest available expense categories in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ consumer price index.
The CPI does not track specific prom-related expenses, so he looked to broader categories to approximate prom-related inflation. For example, he used a full-service meal as a stand-in for the cost of the prom ticket and the indoor flower category to represent the costs of boutonnieres and corsages. Car rentals serve as a substitute for a limousine ride.
Looking back to 2000, Zagorsky found that year to year, most of the items in his index increased less than overall inflation.
Add all those things up, though, and you get a pricey event. That’s the case even for those who don’t go for the extravagances in those viral prom videos.
According to Zagorsky’s estimate, the price of a prom ticket is now up 128 percent since 2000. Personal care, including hair and nails, rose 110 percent over the same period.
The price of men’s suits, meanwhile, has dropped by nearly 30 percent. That coincides with a drop in demand, as suits were phased out of many workplaces. Overseas production has kept costs down, too.
“My whole point in following this data for the last 25 years is that proms are expensive, but they’ve actually been getting relatively cheaper because some of the key components have not gone up as fast as inflation,” Zagorsky said.
That trend, however, shifted over the past year.
“Some things have actually blown through inflation,” He said his index shows.
Compared with 2025, many of these celebratory costs have outpaced the general cost of living. Meal costs, which Zagorsky equates to the price of the prom ticket, jumped 4.4 percent. The price of a limo ride surged 7.3 percent, while hair and makeup services spiked by more than 5 percent.
Many items in the index are imported, making them more expensive in the context of new tariffs. The cost of women’s dresses is up almost 10 percent since this time last year. The cost of plants/corsages has increased by 8.5 percent. This year, only one component, men’s suits, has fallen in price.
“Unfortunately, this means the prom is becoming more expensive than in the recent past,” Zagorsky said. “This will make it harder for cash-strapped teenagers to attend.”
When the prom becomes an exclusive event limited to teens from wealthier families, or when some kids decide to skip the event because they can’t afford to match the extravagance of their peers, we lose something important, Zagorsky said.
“We are living in a divided world, and one of the ways that makes the world a little less divided is having common experiences,” he said.
I agree with Zagorsky’s message. It’s something teens — and their families — could keep in mind to help resist red carpet prom spending.
“It’s important for kids to go to the prom,” he said. “When people have shared experiences, they see a little more commonality.”
There are a lot of parents and children who are looking for Instagram-worthy prom photos and videos. But the advice from an economist is to “tone it down a little bit, so that everybody else can enjoy the event too without feeling they’re competing.”
Restraint when it comes to prom spending, even if you can afford to go all out, keeps the focus on the reason for this rite of passage — having fun with friends rather than trying to show off.
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