Project Provides Free Prom Dresses

High school proms are a rite of passage for many teenagers, but going to the big dance can be expensive.

As The Early Show correspondent Debbye Turner points out, a date isn't the only thing teens need to go. There's the dress, the shoes, the purse, and the tab adds up quickly.

But a community program in Texas is helping teens feel like princesses and go to the prom, without breaking the bank.

It's a godsend for 17-year-old junior Kendra Bone, of Kemp, Texas.

She told Turner, with a chuckle, that she envisioned the perfect prom dress as something that would make her look skinny. She added the dress would "look elegant and shiny or silky, so it has like some glamour to it."

But that would take money her large family, living on a modest budget, doesn't have to spare.

Bone's mother, Tammie Scoma, says the family was asking around town for used prom dresses, to no avail.

Enter the Dallas-based Prom Shop Project, founded by Kim Peters. It seeks donations of gently worn formal wear to give for free to teens who need them. The project also provides shoes, purses and jewelry.

"It's important," Peters says, "because the prom is a huge day for girls. It's a huge, Cinderella, beautiful, girly day."

Peters adds she wants the girls to have the dresses "to not feel insecure on that day, to know that you're just as pretty, and you have something on that is just as beautiful as all of the other girls that evening.

"They're walking away feeling very positive, very confident, very motivated, and I think they're walking away feeling loved, that someone in the community loved me enough to give me thing I thought I'd never have."

Peters has gathered more than 1,000 dresses and invited 500 girls to shop 'til they drop.

She's expanded the program to Austin and intends to move it into San Antonio, as well.

"I love the smiling faces," Peters beams. "I love knowing that you can be able to have a day when you can come in and really give a gift to someone. It's almost like the gift of a lifetime."

Bone found the elegant, shiny, silky dress she'd hoped for.

When she arrived with her friends on prom night, she looked like a princess, indeed, Turner observed, and will have memories of a lifetime, thanks to the Prom Shop Project.