The upcoming dance looms over the girl's head. She really just wants to be able to go to a dance for, you know, dancing and friends. But she can’t do that because this dance is supposed to formal — and formal means dates and tickets and dresses and the whole, extremely expensive shebang. She knows no one’s going to ask her out — and, what’s the point of buying overpriced tickets if she can’t go to the dance with anyone?
The truth is that the ridiculous formality of dances limits participation — the school needs more casual dances.
To start, finding a date can also be very stressful because of personal reasons. Maybe your boyfriend or girlfriend can’t come and you don’t want to go to the dance with any other person. Maybe your personal relationships are too complicated for you to choose someone to go with. Maybe you don’t have someone in your life that’s willing to ask you out to the dance. Either way, casual dances liberate what would otherwise be limited by complicated relationships.
Having casual dances can be a big relief to guys who generally are the ones to ask the girls out. Asking a girl out requires (a) flowers and other trinkets and (b) gathering up the courage to ask a girl out — hours and hours of time.
With more casual dances, it would be less awkward to ask someone to go with you as just a “friend.” This way the after dance “Are we dating now?” situation can also be avoided.
And last but not least is that buying formal wear is a pain. Dress shopping for formals, balls and proms usually start three to four months in advance and result in buying a costly dress you will only probably wear only once.
A normal formal costs somewhere between $100 to $200 — a dress can cost equal to or even more than that. That means you would be spending around $300 for the entire dance. Casual dances usually cost less than 10 percent of that amount, ranging somewhere between $10 to $20.
From a cost-benefit analysis, casual dances are simply more fun, and at lesser cost and stress.