I got invited to prom months ago and I went to prom on Sunday not as a chaperone as I might have in the States but as a guest of a Class of 2012. This is the first prom that I've been to in Bulgaria.

Prom as we know it in the States is a dance. A school sanctioned event.

The overview is, of course, boy asks girl. She buys a dress and he rents a tux. He picks her up with a corsage for her to wear--ideally one that matches her dress--and their parents take pictures. Boy and girl then go to dinner and after this they meet up with their friends and go to the dance.

Maybe the dance is in the ballroom of a hotel or maybe the dance is at the high school. At the dance, there's a DJ and chaperones. The DJ plays loud music and the chaperones check tickets and make sure that no one is drinking at the dance or has been drinking before the dance. Teenagers flirt, gossip and dance suggestively until it's time to go home.

It's a big deal when you're a teenager. Will you go? Who will ask you?/Who will you ask? What will you wear and how do you make sure that no one else is wearing <em>your</em> dress? Where will you go to dinner? What car will your parents let you drive--the station wagon or the sedan? Of course, as an adult these concerns seem a little silly--it's just a dance after all.

Prom in Bulgaria is a whole different ballgame.

Here's the biggest difference: prom is organized and hosted by the students and as such falls outside of the high school's purview. Let me make this even more clear because the students are the driving force behind prom as both the organizers and the funders there's no one to limit the students or to reign them in. Thus, money becomes the only real object when planning the prom. Moreover, the legal drinking age in Bulgaria is 18 and by in large, our high school seniors graduate at age 19.

These factors combine to create an event that on the surface has the trappings of an American prom. Girls still worry about their dresses and boys put off buying suits to wear but in practice these two events the American prom and the Bulgarian ball have very little in common.

So do you find yourself dissatisfied with this post on prom? Do you feel like you didn't get enough on Bulgarian prom? Don't worry. There are at least two more posts to follow. I just had to set the groundwork before I could really dig into the event itself.