Opting for prom without all the frills

Buddy, can you spare a tiara?

The deep recession is taking some of the sparkle out of prom, the high school dance that has become an extravagant rite of passage.

Out are $1,000 dresses and salon waxing treatments. In are consignment-store outfits and drugstore beauty kits. Kids are ditching rented limos for the family car, and even clambering aboard school buses in their formal wear -- hardly the dream coach that many had envisioned whisking them to their big night.

And like harried chief executives across the country facing poor sales, prom organizers are lowering ticket prices and whacking budgets. Goodbye ice sculptures, fancy centerpieces and swag giveaways.

Seniors at Adolfo Camarillo High School in Ventura County have staged no less than 10 fundraisers this school year to help cover the $50,000 tab for the May formal.

"It's already so stressful having to worry about all the things you need for prom," said Kati Munoz, 17, a senior who's helping plan the event. "Now we also have to worry about money on top of that."

Like the rest of her friends on the senior council, Munoz plans to don a cheaper dress than the $1,000 gown she had dreamed of. Instead of going to a salon, she'll have her mother's friend do her hair. She'll also skip the tanning booth for the free but time-consuming chore of bronzing in the sun.

Munoz's thrift is catching. Spending on the $4-billion-a-year prom industry could drop by as much as one-fifth this year, some event planners and marketers say, as the unemployment rate for adults and teenagers has hit levels not seen in a generation.

"Kids are more cost-conscious and dollar-savvy now because they just don't have any money," said Chris Hundley, owner of the Limousine Connection in North Hollywood, who said prom business was easily down by 25% across the limo industry. "The new world order is being low-key."

Elders whose proms consisted of little more than crepe paper streamers and punch in the school gym might approve of the new austerity. But historians say the ritual is rooted in conspicuous consumption.

The very word prom is derived from the debutante balls of the late 1800s, when the single daughters of prominent families would promenade in their finery, according to University of Minnesota American studies professor Karal Ann Marling, author of "Debutante."