Glitter, candy and doughnuts are making their way into the hot and humid halls of Galena High School as students are bringing out their creative sides while taking on the task of asking their significant other to this year’s homecoming dance.

New to the school, even the freshmen are going above and beyond in their homecoming proposals. “You always see the different things people did [in past years] so I think everyone just kind of knows they need to do something special,” said freshman Damian Stephanopoulos. Damian chose to ask Lizzy Eaton to homecoming by giving her a Pokeball that said, ‘I choose you’ inside, which captured him a date.

Sophomore Shea Curran was given a ‘sweet’ surprise as her friend Tyler Moran gave her a box of doughnuts claiming that ‘I doughnut want to go to homecoming with anyone else’. Many students choose to go as friends, but will find a way to make it special anyway.

Even when they are already dating, couples still go out of their way to make sure that they ask that special someone in an extra special way. “I was like 98% sure that he was going to ask me, but the other 2% was just doubt, so I felt relieved,” senior Katie Furlong said about her boyfriend of three years, Drew Peebles. Drew gave Katie a “Dum-Dum sucker tree, which said, “Will you be a Smartie and go to Homecoming with this Dum-Dum?”

Foreign exchange student, Carlos Herrero, had no idea what homecoming even was until coming to America. “[My classmates] just told me what I should do, gave me flowers and told me to ask her,” said Carlos, who asked sophomore Sophia Heisler to his very first homecoming.

A common trend with homecoming asks are play on words. Whether you are looking at food or television shows, Galena students turn to puns as an easy but cute way to ask each other to the dance. “The puns are kind of lame, but the girls and everyone else find it cute, so, hey, why not keep doing it?” Junior Jamie Bennett said.

The expressive homecoming proposals continue to be an important part of homecoming week, and with no sign of dying out, the future of hom-posals seems to be a bright one.