Princess For a Day

By Seon Hye Moon, WireTap. Posted April 30, 2002.

The music is blasting. The pulse of the bass matches that of your heart. The lights on the dance floor are blue, yellow, and red. You've been pampered from head to fingernails to toe. The corsage is on, dinner reservations are made, picture appointments are scheduled, and of course, you're wearing the perfect dress. Everything's just right. The energy of the room is warmly welcoming. With your date by your side, you feel like a princess.

This is the idealized scene. It is the beginning of the grand, timeless evening, the prom. Of course, the actual effort you spent preparing for this night are magnificently concealed. Preparing can take anywhere from a year to a week. But the bill may present an even larger obstacle.

During the last year of high school, there are countless things that have to be done and paid for. Test fees, college application fees, yearbooks, graduation fees, and the list goes on. Inevitably, there are teens who simply cannot afford to add prom expenses to that list.

That's where the Princess Project comes in.

Thanks to the Princess project, female high school students who couldn't afford them, were given the opportunity to pick out free prom dresses and accessories. It happened on a Saturday, in a warehouse in San Francisco's presidio area. The lines were long, but by the end of the day some 400 girls walked out of the warehouse with prom dresses, purses, accessories, shoes, scarves, and handbags full of free makeup.

It all started when Li Qui, a high school senior, started talking to Laney Whitcanack and Kristi Smith Knutson of Coro Northern California, a non-profit educational leadership program from which Li had recently graduated, about her worries about not being able to attend prom.

Whitcanack and Knutson emailed a few friends to try to find a dress for Li and within a few weeks, they were receiving an overwhelming response from women who wanted to help. Soon, hundreds of dresses were being donated and delivered to the Coro offices. Whitcanack and Knutson, received about a thousand extra dresses and decided to ask for more. They received vintage dresses from the back of women's closets, and corporate donations from stores as large as Macy's, of big named brands like Jessica McClintock. And so the Princess Project began.

	Prom or Wedding? Tickets $40-$75

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