Need a prom dress? Head to Sullivan North gym Saturday
KINGSPORT — If you need a prom dress that doesn’t break the bank, Sullivan North High School Student Council members may have just the deal for you this weekend.
Tri-Cities and Southwest Virginia teens can get bargains on gently used prom dresses and other dresses Saturday because of a community service project of North’s 50-member Student Council.
From noon to 4 p.m. Saturday in the gym lobby, the council plans to offer hundreds of dresses from students, faculty and staff at North. Proceeds from the cash-only sale will go back to the owners, with no commission or fee charged, said teacher Suzanne Demming. She said JC Penney donated the use of racks to hang the dresses.
The purchasers will get dresses for a low price, sometimes 75 percent or more off the original price, council sponsor Demming said.
“We don’t get any profit,” Demming said, adding that the event actually will be a slight money loser for the group because it has to hire security for the event. The community service is “dresses at a reasonable price.”
Haley Mays and Nikki Sumner, both 18 and seniors, and Amelia Cannon, 17 and a junior, said they thought the time was ripe for another dress sale.
Mays and Sumner are co-treasurers of the Student Council, while Cannon is secretary this year and president-elect for the 2012-13 school year.
“We did a lot of planning last semester,” Cannon said Wednesday, adding that she hopes to sell her dresses to help pay for a new prom dress on which she’s already made a down payment.
Demming said members of the council wanted to tackle the project again because many teens have dresses collected since the 2007 sale and to give buyers in a still-soft economy a shot at lower-cost dresses.
“The dresses are priced by the owners,” Demming said, adding that most of the dresses have been worn once or twice.
Demming also emphasized that the dresses will be brought to the school from 9 to 11 a.m. — but only by North students, faculty and staff. The event does not allow others to bring in dresses to sell because of liability concerns, and North sellers are not to bring in the dresses until Saturday morning because of a lack of space to store them securely.
“So many people tend to collect them and don’t know what to do with them,” Cannon said.
Sumner said male members of the council are helping out, too.
“I’m excited about this. I have a lot of dresses to sell,” Mays said.
Demming said the prom, semiformal and formal dresses will run a range of styles and sizes. North has girls with dresses from football homecoming, basketball Queen of Hearts, the prom and the Snow Ball, she said, plus from daughters who attend other schools.
“My daughter went to Dobyns-Bennett (High School). I’m going to bring a lot of her dresses,” Demming said.
She said another teacher plans to bring in her daughter’s dresses from Sullivan South High School.
The council held its first event in March 2007, almost five years ago, and based on that Demming said she expects hundreds of dresses to be available in the gym lobby. She said the 2007 sale drew buyers from across the region.
The North Student Council won an award from the Tennessee Association of Student Councils for the 2007 service project, Demming said, adding that since then the sale has been replicated by other school groups across Tennessee.
The group is the only four-star student council east of Knoxville, Demming said.
Other council projects this year include a homecoming food drive, veterans projects and homecoming activities.
The sale is open to the public. North is located at 2533 N. John B. Dennis Highway.
For more information on the sale call North during school hours at 354-1400.
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