With donated prom dresses, teen wants to give others their 'princess moment'
Lavender, mint green, red and blue. Beaded, simple, ruched.
Waverly High School senior Atiyaa Bolling sorted through a sea of dresses - a few hundred of them - with a smile on her face.
"Here's some. And here's more. And here's more."
She was pointing out different piles of prom dresses in a back room in the basement of St. Casimir Catholic Church. Dresses waiting to be hung. Dresses waiting to be discovered as the dress of someone's dreams.
Atiyaa has been collecting prom dresses for a shopping day, a giveway of free prom dresses for girls who might not be able to afford to buy one.
"I want to give every girl the opportunity to find the perfect dress, the dress that makes her feel like a princess," Atiyaa said. "Every girl. Not just those who can afford some of the expensive prom dresses."
Atiyaa is a prom associate at Fantastic Finds, a bridal salon that also carries prom dresses. Her "aha" moment happened a few months after she began working there.
Atiyaa Bolling, a senior at Waverly High School, helps sort prom dresses on Wednesday, April 6, 2016 at St. Casimir Catholic Church in Lansing. Bolling is collecting prom dresses for those in need. (Photo: Julia Nagy, Lansing State Journal)
"A girl came in and was kind of looking around at the dresses and told me she found them very pretty, but just couldn't afford the price for prom," Atiyaa said.
Image: blue prom dresses
She asked if the store had any sales going on, and at the time they didn't. Prom dresses at Fantastic Finds start around $250 and can go up to $600 depending on the dress style, according to the bridal salon.
"She was so excited about finding a prom dress, and her mom was so dedicated," Atiyaa said. "She told her they'd keep looking. I kept thinking about giving her that princess moment and sadly, I wasn’t able to. That kind of prompted me to want to start this."
After sharing her idea with her mother, Debbie Bolling, they went to work.
"I was not surprised when Atiyaa came to me with this, because she loves to help people and she loves big projects," said Bolling. "We were driving, and she was having the whole conversation about loving her job and wanting to help these girls, and I could just see, click click click going on in her head."
Atiyaa is graduating this year and going off to college. Bolling was thinking this would be their last big project together before her daughter leaves.
Bolling is a juvenile court officer. She does volunteer work with a nonprofit called the Child Benefit Fund, which came in as a partner on the project, allowing donations to be tax deductible.
"We used lots of different connections that we all had through different schools," Bolling said. "Atiyaa started contacting her friends at Okemos High School, one who is student council president and they wanted to help. She contacted a coach who had coached one of her AAU teams and works at Mason High School and they spread the word."
They decided it was important "that it would be driven a lot by students, and that it would be community service work for students and that students would give to other students," Bolling said. "Student organizations from the schools call, email, they are really excited. That has been a really good part of this."
Atiyaa is working with several high schools in the area.
"Mason High School, East Lansing High School, Everett High School, they have been some of the biggest partners," she said. "Connecting with their student organizations, and collecting that way, and of course my own school. I am president of the (National Honor Society) and a lot of people in my organization have been helping. It has been a community event."
And one that's spread well beyond the local community. People have sent dresses from Ohio, Pennsylvania, Bolling said.
"They packed them up and sent them," she said. "It has been exciting to see how many other people got excited about it."
Atiyaa's friends have joined in, helping to collect and sort.
"Atiyaa is my best friend so I'm kind of helping her get stuff together," said Jasmine Jackson, also a senior at Waverly High School. "I try to spread the word on social media, tweeting, fliers, so people can get in contact with her. I think it's a nice gesture towards our community."
The majority of the dresses came from Baryames Cleaners. When Bolling approached Baryames in downtown Lansing about partnering with them to clean donated dresses, she was in for a surprise.
"The lady working said 'I think we have a bunch of dresses,'" she said. "She told me they were partnered with somebody at one time, and she thought they had several dresses and she would have someone get back with me. When they contacted us, they said they had about 400 or 500 dresses, and we could have them all."
Baryames has built dressing rooms for the event and will be loaning dress racks, as well.
"The one thing that Baryames told us was that the dresses could not be sold," Bolling said. "They had to be free. That was the big thing. They could not go to any charitable institutions. They didn’t want them to be resold."
Bolling turned to her good friend Dekeea Davis, an outreach coordinator at St. Casimir, to find a space for the event.
"This whole room will be transformed," Davis said, sitting at a table in the church's basement. "It will be very princessey in here. Very pinkish."
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