Annual spring dance at Corn Palace a ‘community celebration,’ says adviser

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Mitchell High School senior Kali Voight, 18, checks her hair in a mirror set up for the MHS prom at the Corn Palace Friday night. (Tom Lawrence/Republic Photo)

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Brianne Sambo wanted to “drag Main a few times” before arriving at the Mitchell High School prom Saturday night.

Sambo and her date, Dylan Hart, and their friends Breanne Styles and Logan Parr did just that before arriving at the Corn Palace for the big event.

And the four MHS students did it in style, in a horse-drawn carriage.

Sambo, 18, a senior, said she went to the 2010 prom in a more traditional way: “just a limo.” But this year, she and her mother planned a striking way to travel to the spring dance.

The students rode in a carriage with Darin Ford, of Mitchell, at the reins. Rex and Rachel, a pair of Shires, powerful draft horses, clopped their way down Main Street before dropping off the two smartly dressed couples.

The prom theme was “Hollywood,” with black, red and “a little bit of gold” as the colors, according to MHS prom adviser Lori Schmidt. The girls dressed in glittering fashion and the boys wore suits or tuxedos, mostly black but some white or in other celebratory shades.

Tonya Ford, whose husband drove the carriage, watched the event unfold and joined a group of women who cheered on the students and snapped photos of arriving couples. Ford said she recalls her own senior prom in 1986.

It was a major event then, too, she said, but the prom has grown dramatically. It has also become more expensive, Ford noted.

“It’s nothing for these girls to spend $1,200, $1,500 on those dresses,” she said.

Most of the girls wore elaborate shoes but many also carried sneakers to don for the dance that followed the grand march and the afterprom party that went on until nearly daylight.

Schmidt said 156 couples were expected. They danced to music from Square One Productions, of Brookings, inside the decorated Corn Palace.

Before the start, the girls and boys mingled in the hallways, adjusting hair and clothes and sharing compliments.

“You look so pretty,” one girl said to her friend.

“Pick up those shoes,” one boy said in jest to another who had been assigned to guard his date’s fancy footwear while she scooted around in her stockings.

The prom is a “major community event,” Schmidt said, and that was evident as a huge throng arrived to inspect the Corn Palace and watch the couples make their grand march.

“Just another fun full house at the Corn Palace and a great community event,” she said. “Everybody had a good time.”

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