Prom

Prom is both a public high-school ritual and a private measure of how Lara Jean Covey understands love, memory, and growing up. As the date approaches, the school turns romantic invitations into spectacle, but Lara Jean resists the idea that one night must fulfill every expectation. For her, the night matters less as a guaranteed perfect climax than as a chance to bring Peter Kavinsky and her family into the same frame before life changes.

Anticipation and the schoolwide spectacle

The approach of prom first appears in small questions and practical uncertainty. Stormy asks Lara Jean whether she has a dress, though prom is not until May. At school, meanwhile, invitations have already become elaborate public performances. An a cappella group serenades a junior with a personalized version of “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” Steve Bledell hijacks the announcements board to ask Liz, and Darrell fills Pammy’s locker with red roses arranged into a question. The IT department takes two days to restore the announcements board; Darrell is yelled at by the janitor, but the roses make an impressive picture on Pammy’s Instagram.

The spectacle gives Lara Jean reason to wonder what Peter might be planning. She does not expect him to excel at grand romantic gestures, and the contrast between that uncertainty and the increasingly elaborate proposals around them makes his eventual surprise especially characteristic: it is theatrical enough to be memorable, but it belongs to their shared private language rather than to the school’s competition for scale.

Expectations, friendship, and ordinary perfection

In the nurse’s office, Lucas Krapf compares prom to New Year’s Eve: both buckle under the weight of expectations about a single, supposedly epic night. His complaint gives voice to a pressure that Lara Jean does not entirely share. She thinks a perfect high-school night is more likely to be an unplanned, seemingly insignificant moment, and believes she has already had about twelve such nights with Peter. Prom therefore need not prove the relationship or surpass everything that came before.

Her imagined prom is domestic as well as romantic. She pictures Peter in a tuxedo being polite to her father, putting a corsage on Kitty, and joining the family for a photograph by the mantel. She makes a mental note to ask Peter to get Kitty an extra corsage. That detail turns the formal date into a family occasion: Lara Jean’s anticipation includes her youngest sister rather than treating romance as an escape from home.

The night also touches an older promise between Lara Jean and Chris. They had said they would go to prom together and watch the sun rise over the elementary-school playground. Chris tells Lara Jean she can watch the sunrise with Kavinsky, but Lara Jean insists that it would not be the same. The exchange registers the cost of a new romantic future without erasing the friendship that preceded it. Prom can be shared with Peter, yet the promised sunrise with Chris remains a distinct bond and a memory of their earlier plans.

Peter’s proposal in New York

Peter’s promposal arrives on the senior trip to New York City, where a public-place security check briefly exposes what he has been trying to keep secret. A guard finds a teddy bear in Peter’s backpack and asks about it; Peter explains that it is for a surprise promposal to his girlfriend. The accompanying paper, marked “Squeeze Me,” has fallen off while the bag was being searched. Peter has planned the mechanism, though not the consequences of leaving an unattended bag in New York.

When Lara Jean squeezes the bear, it speaks Peter’s invitation: “Will you go to prom with me, Lara Jean?” She says yes to the bear, whose name is Howard, after Howard from Sleepless in Seattle. Peter protests that she has answered him rather than the bear only because the bear asked. Her playful insistence on the distinction lets the proposal become a small performance between them: Peter supplies the surprise, and Lara Jean answers in the terms of their joke. The scene transforms the public anxiety surrounding unattended luggage into an intimate, joyful invitation, while preserving the teddy bear as the memorable object at its center.

The night, its keepsakes, and the threshold beyond it

When prom finally comes, Lara Jean’s last act before going downstairs is to put on Stormy’s ring. She thinks of Stormy looking down happily at her wearing it for prom, honoring the many dances Stormy attended. The ring makes the evening connect generations and turns getting dressed into an act of remembrance as well as preparation. Peter is waiting with his mother, nervously shaking his knee; when he sees Lara Jean, he stands and tells her she looks “wow.” He had spent the preceding week asking about her dress, and her decision to keep it a surprise makes his reaction part of the occasion.

The prom imagery sits beside Lara Jean’s awareness that adulthood is approaching. She imagines her first sexual experience as something that will probably happen at college, in her own room, when she is an adult; at home, she is still Lara Jean the sister and daughter, whereas college might allow her simply to be Lara Jean. This does not make prom a shortcut into adulthood. Rather, its formal clothes, family roles, and romantic intimacy show her poised between identities, with the transition still ahead.

Graduation and the coming departure further sharpen that threshold. During the valedictorian speech, Lara Jean looks for Peter’s family in the crowd, while her own family waves conspicuously; Trina’s wide-brimmed Kentucky Derby hat is so large that the row behind her may not be able to see. The detail gives the ceremony a comic, distinctly familial texture, in contrast to the formal moment when Lara Jean accepts her diploma under the name “Lara Jean Song Covey” and quietly corrects the principal’s mispronunciation. Prom’s imagined family photograph by the mantel and graduation’s actual crowd both place her public milestones within the people who have shaped her.

The book’s later celebrations echo prom’s use of ritual to hold change in view. At Dan Covey and Trina Rothschild’s wedding, “Lullaby” plays as Kitty, Margot, and Lara Jean take their places, and the sisters share a father-daughter dance that Trina proposed in place of another dance for herself and Dan. The sequence—Margot first, Lara Jean next, Kitty ready to cut in—makes family affection visible through a planned dance. On the night before leaving for college, Lara Jean and Peter instead go to the lake to watch the Perseids meteor shower. Kitty longs to come but does not ask; Lara Jean sees her disappointment and feels guilty about keeping this remaining time with Peter to herself. Across these moments, prom belongs to a wider pattern: ceremonies and shared outings mark transitions, but they also expose the attachments that cannot simply be carried forward unchanged.