The family-run nonprofit Once Upon a Prom recently hosted its annual giveaway at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, where hundreds of students perused racks of prom dresses and tuxedos donated by community partners.
The prom attire provided by OUAP is free for students to take home, no questions asked. Upbeat pop music plays from a boombox while dozens of students flip through lines of clothing racks. Friends take dresses back to the changing rooms in groups of twos and threes, while volunteers bustle around in sherbet-green OUAP tees.
Bethesda-Chevy Chase senior Cariyanna Washington and their friend Tianna Tackie found out about the event from an Instagram post. A dress draped over her arm, Washington told MoCo360 prom is often seen as the culmination of one’s high school memories, and OUAP gives girls a chance to attend who otherwise would have foregone the experience due to cost concerns.
“You only get one prom. Make it the best,” they said. “Come while you can and have fun.”
Fellow B-CC senior Edele Deneke pointed out that new prom dresses usually cost over $200, and for many of her peers that price tag can be prohibitive.
“This event makes the whole experience more accessible for everyone,” she said.
OUAP also offers free shoes, ties, accessories and certificates for manicures and hair appointments. Approximately 500 dresses were given away on Friday. The event took place in the downstairs B-CC wrestling room from noon to 6 p.m.
Student organizers Vittoria Bianchini, Grayson Barrow, Anna Antinolfi and Brooke Silver pose at Friday’s OUAP giveaway. Credit: Em Espey 
A banner hangs outside the Bethesda-Chevy Chase campus advertising the event. Credit: Em Espey 
Students flip through racks of clothing looking for the perfect dress or tux, many accompanied by friends or family members. Credit: Em Espey 
B-CC seniors Coriyanna Washington and Tianna Tackie pose outside the dressing rooms in prom dresses. Credit: Em Espey 
Students wait in line to try on their finds in gender-neutral dressing rooms at the back of the room. Credit: Em Espey 
Many of the free prom dresses made available by OUAP are brand new and valued worth hundreds of dollars. Credit: Em Espey 
B-CC senior Edele Deneke said prom is an important event for many students and a time to make one of your last big memories in high school. Credit: Em Espey 
Dresses are donated by individuals and community partners alike. Many still have their original price tags. Credit: Em Espey 
Tables line one wall of the room, filled with shoes, jewelry and other carefully-organized accessories. Credit: Em Espey
Students came from across Montgomery County to search for prom attire, with organizers saying most were from Northwestern and Gaithersburg high schools. Exchange students visiting from around the world also attend the event through American Field Service (AFS) intercultural programs.
AFS student Erum Shah from Pakistan attended the giveaway last year. In an email provided to MoCo360, she described feeling terrified at the thought of going to prom because she didn’t know how she would afford a dress. She said OUAP helped her “American Dream of going to prom become a reality.”
Pedro Sandoval is a youth development worker who has been helping Latine students from Northwestern attend the event every year since 2016. He said he hears girls say they’re not really interested in prom all the time, but he knows there’s often more to the story.
“It’s not that they don’t want to go. It’s that they can’t afford it,” he said. “When they find out we can get them a free dress, nails, hair, shoes—then they’re interested.”
A family affair
Once Upon a Prom was first brought to life in 2008 by the Silver family, who live in Chevy Chase. Carly Silver, a 29-year-old Harvard business student and the oldest in the family of eight, noticed during her junior year at B-CC that many of her peers avoided going to prom because they couldn’t afford it. The family launched OUAP to address this inequity in prom attendance.
The first year OUAP hosted an event, they collected 50 dresses and gave away 13. Currently, OUAP stores over 3,000 donated dresses in its Bethesda warehouse.
OUAP has been passed down through the family every year since its launch, with each of Carly Silver’s five sisters taking the reins in turn as the older one graduates. Wendy Silver, Carly’s mother, said the program’s reach “grows exponentially and takes on new dimensions” every year the baton is passed.
Throughout the school year, the Silver family solicits and collects dresses from donors around the county and beyond. Many dresses are brand new, and others are gently used and washed. The Silver siblings sort, size, tag and rack the dresses with the help of friends.
The group’s biggest partner is New York-based Jump Design Group, a fashion company that donates 200 new dresses to OUAP every year with a total value of $20,000. Several local salons offer free hair and manicure certificates, and companies such as Bloomingdale and Nordstrom donate makeup products and jewelry.
As giveaway day approaches, the Silver students and their friends put up posters in schools, on community boards and in other places likely to draw attention. They send out emails to neighborhood listservs and create social media campaigns. They also gather manicure and hair certificates from vendors. They partner with Metropolitan Moving and Storage to transport all the prom attire to the event space.
Wendy Silver describes herself as a “parent facilitator” of OUAP, letting her daughters take the reins when it comes to decision-making and leadership.
“I believe if we cultivate the desire to do good from a young age, it stays with the child into their adult years,” she said. “Every year we do this, I’m astounded by what 17-year-old kids are capable of, how they communicate, how they emotionally connect. It’s a beautiful thing to watch.”
LGBTQ+ inclusivity
This year, youngest sibling Brooke Silver became the last sister to run OUAP. She said her mission is to increase OUAP’s reach with a specific focus on making the LGBTQ+ community feel welcomed.
“When we started this 15 years ago, gender wasn’t something anyone paid attention to,” she said. “I’ve gone out of my way to make sure we drop the whole ‘girls wear dresses and everything is pink’ kind of language. My goal is to make sure everyone feels welcome, because I have a lot of friends who often don’t feel included.”
The program’s slogan used to be “every girl becomes a princess for the night,” but under Brooke Silver’s leadership the language has shifted to be more gender neutral. Wendy Silver, said last year the family noticed more girls asking for traditionally male attire and boys asking for traditionally female attire, prompting them to reevaluate their approach.
“We decided that as the world was becoming more evolutionary in its thinking, we too needed to be more evolutionary in our thinking and not just embrace traditional gender roles,” she said.
Brooke Silver’s team is partnering with the B-CC Gender and Sexuality Alliance club to host a drag fashion show in March, where performers will get to pick out dresses from the OUAP stash.
Silver said the family is on a “scouting mission” for underclassmen to pick up the mantle after she graduates next year.
“It’s going to be a bittersweet goodbye,” she said. “Every year in the springtime, our whole house is just Once Upon a Prom.”
Wendy Silver said the family is looking to expand OUAP outside of Montgomery County to areas where there’s more dire economic and personal need, mentioning Prince George’s County as one place of interest. She said the biggest challenge will be getting funding to cover transportation of the dresses from their Bethesda warehouse to the neighboring county.
“Everything is already racked, sorted and arranged. We just need the ability to transport the dresses to PG County,” she said. “We could do so much good.”
