Recently, many students have participated in promposals. A “promposal” refers to the manner in which one asks another to prom. The Student Government Association, or SGA, offered an incentive for promposing. This year, whenever a person promposed to another, they took a picture and submitted it to the SGA twitter account.

Depending on how many likes and retweets each couple’s promposal received, they were put in the running towards winning the contest. The contest was officially over on April 8 and the winners were named as follows: first place senior Alyssa Losurdo, second place junior Taylor Laible and third place senior Philip Protz.

Losurdo asked Dante Darden to prom and the question took him by surprise. Her promposal asked “Will you be my Beyoncé to prom?” and was filled with pictures of Beyoncé.

“Dante loves Beyoncé and smiles whenever he hears her voice or her name,” said Losurdo. “He makes me happy whenever I am around him, so he inspired me.”

Darden was ecstatic.

“He was so happy when I asked him that he started to cry,” said Losurdo. “That made me so incredibly joyous and made me feel so good that I could make him that happy.”

Losurdo’s promposal went viral and was even featured on Channel 17 CBS North Carolina.

“We were featured on the talk show because Coach Terrell set it up for us, which was amazing!” said Losurdo. “I hope that the students who watched it felt inspired.”

Losurdo said that it took about a week for her to prepare everything. While this may seem like a long time, Laible explained that it took her nearly two weeks to plan and execute her promposal. Laible asked her boyfriend, Josh Greune, a senior that moved to Minnesota but attended Wakefield last year.

“I was stuck between a couple ways to ask him,” said Laible. “So I decided to incorporate them all into a scavenger hunt.”

Laible began the scavenger hunt with a customized fortune cookie that read, “You will be asked a special question in your near future…” The hunt then led Greune to Life Time Fitness where he had to crack a locker combination based on the clue he was given. Once he figured out the combination, he opened the locker to find chocolate covered strawberries and a poster with another clue.

After this, he was led to Texas Roadhouse only to find a cake that Laible baked a clue into. The clue directed him to Laible’s house, and there he found a fish bowl along with another poster. He finally followed a trail of Hershey kisses that led to her room and found two large presents and letters that spelled out, “PROM?” One present said yes and the other said no.

“He opened the yes box and I was inside,” said Laible. “We then let Sarah Blackwood out of the no box. He was very surprised with all of the effort. He said it made him feel very special.”

That is precisely what makes promposals so special: the element of surprise. Protz surprised his girlfriend, Hannah Woolard, a senior at Millbrook, with his promposal.

“My promposal wasn’t as complicated as some may think,” said Protz.

Protz took his girlfriend canoeing at a place near his house. Two hours before, he planted some flowers to spell out the revolutionary question, “Prom?”

“It took her like half a minute to even see the flowers,” said Protz.  “Even when she did , she didn’t wrap her mind around what had happened for awhile. I just kind of sat there and stared at her waiting for her to say something, but when she finally realized, she was very impressed because she was so surprised.”

Protz advises everyone to be creative.

“My only advice is just to be creative!” said Protz. “There are a lot of ideas that have been used over and over a thousand times, but I would just suggest inventing a new idea that has never been done before.”

Assistant Principal, Eric Betheil, also explained that he enjoyed promposals because they are unique to each individual.

“I think they’re nice because everyone does it individually,” said Betheil. “Everyone tries to do it in their own unique way, so we’ve seen lots of different ideas.”