Local students embracing promposal trend
Fort Cherry junior Riley Karns asked his girlfriend Victoria Sakelos to prom by decorating her Jeep while she was at work.
McGuffey junior Bryce Roscoe asked his girlfriend, Trinity freshman Arabella Thompson, to prom with a giant sign made of a tarp and lit with Christmas lights.
South Fayette junior Gretchen Wortman said she would go to prom with freshman Michael Cusick if his Tweet got 1,000 retweets in one week.
Armed with a giant tarp, neon paint, 35 feet of Christmas lights and eight roses, Bryce Roscoe was ready to pop the big question.
He had really outdone himself this time, and he knew it. When he asked girlfriend Arabella Thompson to homecoming, he filled up an entire room with balloons. But this had to bigger – much bigger. It was prom, after all.
“I try to one-up myself every time, which is pretty hard,” he said. “I knew she was going to say yes, but I just wanted to go big anyway.” Prom frenzy is nothing knew in high school, but promposals are. They are elaborate invitations to go to prom, which can mimic a proposal in expense and effort.
A recent Visa study showed the average teen now spends $324 on promposals. While local students are embracing the concept, the expense is less extravagant.
For Thompson, a freshman at Trinity High School, the invitation caught her so off guard she forgot the most important part.
“I kind of forgot to say ‘yes’ I was so surprised,” she said.
“She started taking pictures when I was standing there,” said Roscoe, a junior at McGuffey.
Instead of a tarp, Fort Cherry junior Riley Karn used his girlfriend’s Jeep as a canvas.
Canon-McMillan senior Victoria Sakelos was finishing a nine-hour shift at Tanger Outlets April 4 when she got her promposal.
“I went outside to get my Jeep, and it was all decorated, and he had a really big sign,” she said.
The Jeep was decorated with photos from different times in their relationship. The sign said, “All these memories … Let’s make more.”
“It was really unexpected. I was having a really rough day,” she said.
South Fayette junior Gretchen Wortman took a little more convincing from freshman Michael Cusick.
“He wanted to go to prom really bad, but since he’s a freshman and I’m a junior, it was a little bit awkward. So I thought I would give him a little bit of a challenge,” she said.
The two, who are “just friends,” discussed the prospect of going to prom, again, after what Wortman said were several denied requests.
“I said, ‘I’ll tell you what,'” Cusick said. ‘”I get a thousand retweets, and you go with me,’ and she said ‘OK.'”
He had only one week, so he Tweeted his promposal to popular handles, including Steeler Nation and Pittsburgh City Controller Michael Lamb.
“He tried calling KDKA to try to get them to put it on the news, but that didn’t go too well,” Wortman said.
By the April 28 deadline, he had exceeded his 1,000 requirement.
Wortman said she was surprised by his enthusiasm.
“I knew he was a little crazy, but I didn’t think he would go this wild,” Wortman said.
But she isn’t denying she was also impressed.