Cirque D'amour Prom

Our school recently held its annual prom, a formal dance for juniors and seniors. My coworker and friend is in charge of planning, decorating and working on Prom, so I get roped in to help out every year. 

I don't mind so much. Mostly, I figure out her vision, turn it into doable decorations and then help teach our students how to create the decorations.

Those students then make a dozen or so centerpieces to place on the tables. This year the vision was a Cirque de Soleil theme on practically no money.

 So we built everything from styrofoam, gossamer, tape. Lots of tape, wire and string. We started out by cutting styrofoam into the silhouettes of flying dancers.  

We added a colorful tent and a ceiling both made of gossamer. From the ceiling we hung a variety of colorful umbrellas, paper lanterns, rings and the silhouettes.

Then dressed the tables in teal, black, and white and added our centerpieces to all the other decorations.

To save money and add to our decorations--our Cirque de Soleil theme needed lots of action--we added cardboard people in the upper levels from another school's prom, which happened the week before.

We worked after school for several days just cutting and painting decorations, which included the silhouettes, an elephant, a lion and other interesting pieces. Then for two days we put up the ceiling, the tent, and the rest of decorations.

All of which were a great hit and a had a lasting impression.