Say Yes to the Dress: Prom Edition
Prom dress hunting is now open.
The account “bullittpromdresses” is a page on Instagram where students or former students from Bullitt County can easily buy or sell used prom dresses.
This highly followed page was created by two high schoolers at Bullitt Central. The Instagram account has helped many girls find affordable dresses for prom. However, selling too close to home has its difficulties.
Bullitt Central seniors Ally Renfrow and Dariess Goff are the founders of the Instagram page, “bullittpromdresses” that now has over 3,200 followers and counting. Renfrow uploaded the first dress on January 13, 2015, when she was a sophomore.
“I started the page my sophomore year because I knew I was going to want an expensive dress and my parents weren’t going to help me pay for it since it technically wasn’t my prom. And it got super annoying scrolling through Instagram to find what their past dresses looked like, so I made the page and hoped it would help me find a dress and it did! I’ve sold three dresses on here and bought two,” said Renfrow.
To upload the dresses to the page, the girls will send pictures of their used dresses in a direct message to the page and give a short description on the information that pertains to their dress.
However, sometimes the customers will become impatient and that causes problems on the account.
“We’ve had a couple problems with patience. So many people want their dress posted as soon as they send it in. The way we work is we start from the bottom to the top of DM’s [direct messages]. So if one were to send a message on the 15 and then someone on the 17, the one that was sent on the 15 would be posted first, even though the message from the 17 is at the top of the messages. And there are girls who will message more than one time asking ‘will you post my dress’ and ‘when are you going to post’ and that just moves their messages back up to the top! It’s not a huge problem, I just can understand how frustrating it is for the girls to send their dress in and want to have it posted to get the word out that their dress is being sold,” said Goff.
With the page getting more and more followers, it gets about 100 messages a day, but this can cause some problems for the girls trying to sell their dresses. “So many people request their dress to be put on there and it takes a while for your dress to be posted,” said Bullitt East senior, Kelsey Coke. Currently, the page has 2,048 posts of dresses being sold.
While there are always negatives in any situation, the positives tend to outweigh them. “We both [Renfrow and Goff] have our dresses on this page posted and it’s easy to get the word out because, in the society we live in, everything is on social media. I know there have been several, several dresses that have been sold on this page. It’s easy and very helpful for those who may not afford a new one or simply fall in love with one on here,” said Goff.
Since the page is exclusive to girls that live in Bullitt County, it helps them to not have to travel far to exchange the dress. “They live close to you, so it’s an easy drive to come over and try it on,” said Coke.
However, buying or selling a used dress locally also has its downsides. “Some difficulties of selling your dress so close to home is the lack of customers,” said Katie Jackson, senior at Bullitt East.
“The only difficulty is if that person goes to your school or a new school year, they want it to be a dress nobody’s seen,” said Coke.
The two Bullitt Central seniors will be graduating soon and they are unsure if they will still control the page once they enter college. “I’d pass it off and hope they will continue to do it every year like me. I know of so many girls I’ve helped to sell and find good, affordable dresses,” said Renfrow.
To be able to buy and sell used dresses in our own community has been an amazing opportunity for all of the girls living in Bullitt County. Hopefully, the page will stay open for future students.