Four years ago, over 100 prom dresses sat inside of the Woven Boutique, a clothing charity ran by Together We Church. Uncertainty surrounded what to do with them until a student came in requesting a prom dress. Thus, Prom Threads was born.

Prom Threads was an annual charity event where students could make an appointment to select a dress, shoes, accessories and receive financial assistance for a nail appointment and prom tickets, all free of charge.
According to Visa, the average teenager spends $919 on Prom. For some families, this cost is unrealistic. Prom Threads was designed to help students attend without that level of expense.

“A student said her mom has been working two jobs to be able to pay for a prom dress,” Director London Lockhart said. “She hasn’t seen her mom in a couple of weeks because her mom’s been working so much, and now she said that she gets to spend a little more time with her mom.”

The first year, the event was organized in two weeks and served eight students. In 2025, 24 students attended, and at the time of writing this article, registrations for 2026 have surpassed that number.

“They can take pictures in front of a fun photo booth,” Lockhart said, “We’re going to have a dirty soda bar, it’s truly a fun event that they can hang out with their family and just feel worthy of getting to do something special.”

Many businesses and local bakeries pitched in, such as Walmart with their beverages, Trader Joe’s with flowers, Forever 21 with accessories and Dillard’s with perfume samples.

“It’s 100% donated by people in our community,” Lockhart said. “So why can’t we turn around and give that back to our community?”

The hardest part of the event was ensuring enough usable dresses were donated. Many of the donations had stains, rips, tears or blemishes.

“Right now, we have a little over 300 dresses, though,” Lockhart said.

To register, students were required to describe their needs and meet the criteria of being a high school student who is eligible for prom. Roughly 85% of people who registered were able to attend.

“The few girls who registered and did not make it to the event last year, we still allowed them to come into the store afterwards and pick out a dress,” Lockhart said.