Every Winter or Spring, we host a Family Formal to honor 9th thru 12th grade.  This is not your traditional Prom.  We encourage all ages to participate.  We have worked out a system that we thinks works really well. 

• 9th thru 12th Grade are honored and allowed to dress in Formal Attire
  
• 9th thru 12th Grade are asked to spend as little money as possible on girls attire, trading gowns, wearing previously worn gowns, wearing church attire, etc.  Boys wear dress pants, collared shirts and tie.
  
• 6th thru 8th graders are our servers.  Any child in these grades is allowed to be a server.  No prior sign up necessary but appreciated.  If they attend the formal, they can come up and serve.  
• Teens are the designers and inspiration of the formal
  
• Teens are the workers, setup crew and clean up crew
• 2 or 3 moms become the temporary sponsors for each year
• In November, St. Bernard's Auditorium is contacted to reserve a night, which is free
• If St. Bernard's doesn't have any available nights the search begins for a large building.
  
• In November/February of each year, all the teens gather together to make phone calls to solicit Christmas &/or Holiday Decorations for the formal.  The first 3 years they have managed to get all decorations donated from local businesses that are planning to just destroy their store decorations at the end of each of Holiday.  We received major amounts of donated decorations, especially Christmas/winter decorations.  Many are reusable but many must be discarded as requested by the business. 
  
• Moms/dads bring one side dish with 30 servings or more
• Moms/dads bring one standard size dessert
• The meat selections, salads, rolls and misc are catered by McKay's catering for the cost of the food/supplies only.
• The teens help with the prep work of the meat selections ahead of time
• Pictures are taken by moms with high quality cameras and downloaded to disks at a cost of $1
• The cost for each person is just the cost of their food/supplies.
• Fundraisers will be implemented in 2010 for the 2011 Winter Formal to reduce the cost to less than $10 per person.

Finally, we all get together for great food, board games, Wii competitions, etc, and end the evening with a dance for those interested in staying.