A mom who was struggling to find inspiration for her daughter’s dress for the annual daughter-daddy dance decided to alter her own prom dress for the little girl to wear on her special day.
Mom-of-three Lexi Donelson had worn the turquoise dress to her prom in April 2012 with her high school sweetheart, Dewey, 26, a rancher.
The couple had started dating a couple of months before the prom but first met when they were aged 10 as they had been in the same class at school.
They got married in July 2016 and have since welcomed three children together—Bear, 6, Sterling, 5, and SJ, 2.
In February, the stay-at-home mom from Ponca City, Oklahoma, was shopping for a dress for her 5-year-old daughter, Sterling, but couldn’t find one she liked.
“I saw one similar to my prom dress and I just had the idea—why don’t I alter mine?” Lexi said. “I called my mom, and we worked out how to do it.”
Lexi and her mom, Karena Logan, 48, a retired accountant, played around with the dress and tried to rearrange it before cutting the tulle at the bottom to shorten the dress and tightening the chest to make it smaller.
The pair spent around two hours altering the dress before Lexi was happy with it.
“When I first told Sterling before it was altered, I said: ‘This is going to be your dress now.’ She was really confused," Lexi said.
However, seeing her mother and grandmother cutting and sewing it, Sterling got really excited.
“When she was younger, I would try it on and she’d call it my Elsa dress,“ Lexi said. “Now she says ‘It’s my Elsa dress.’”
After the dress was made to her size, Sterling was so elated with her dress that she didn’t want to take it off. Lexi told her that she shouldn’t wear it before the special dance and suggested keeping it for the dance but wearing it every day after that.
Both Lexi and Dewey feel strongly about the importance of the “daddy and daughter dance.”
Seeing her daughter and husband, Lexi couldn’t help but remember her own prom day.
“I couldn’t imagine he would be such an amazing dad,” Lexi said. “He woke up early and went to get her flowers and a teddy bear.”
Lexi snapped pictures of Sterling and Dewey in their outfits before the dance and gets “emotional” thinking about the moment.
Now Sterling wears the dress so much that the straps have “popped off.”
Lexi is so happy and grateful that her mom kept her old clothes and has her following year’s prom dress too—a mermaid-style gown.
“My mom is very sentimental and kept everything,“ she said. ”I have another dress from prom that she can wear for her prom or whatever she wants.”
