BOOMBA ad: two hours before prom i was sitting on my floor holding a strapless bra

Two hours before prom, with my hair half done and my nails wet, I was sitting on my bedroom floor in my underwear with a strapless bra in my hand, and I had already cried once and I was about to cry again. I want to tell this properly, because prom was four months ago and I am still annoyed about it, and because I know there are girls who are going to buy a dress in the next few months and have absolutely no idea what they are walking into. I bought my dress in February. Strapless, with a low back, in a lilac satin. It is the most expensive thing I have ever owned, it was $180, and I bought it because of how it looked in the photo of the model, which is apparently how everyone buys everything. And nobody, not the woman in the shop, not my mum, not one of my friends who came with me, asked me the one question that mattered, which is what is going to be underneath it. Here is what I tried, in the three months between buying the dress and prom night, and I am going to be very specific because this cost me time, money and at least two evenings of feeling awful. The normal strapless bra. I own two now. Neither of them works. The problem with a strapless bra is that there is nothing holding it up except tension, so it slowly, patiently works its way down my ribs over about three hours, and by hour four I am pulling at it through the dress. And the other thing, which is worse for this specific dress, is that a strapless bra has a band that wraps all the way around, which means it sits precisely where the back of my dress is cut away. So the back of a gorgeous backless dress has a beige strap across it at the exact place you bought the dress for. The silicone covers, the sticky circle ones. They do not do anything except what they are for, which is a different job entirely. Under a strapless dress they add nothing, hold nothing, and my dress still gaped at the top because there was nothing filling it. The shapewear option my mum suggested, which was a bodysuit with a built in bra. This one sounds clever and it is genuinely a completely different problem, because the bodysuit has straps, and the straps have to go somewhere, and there is nowhere on this dress for them to go. Someone in my year suggested tape, which people genuinely do and which I was not going to do, because I have seen the videos and I do not want to be the girl in the group chat explaining what happened at prom. My mum's actual best suggestion, said in a completely sincere voice, was a cardigan, or a shrug. Which is when I cried the first time. The real plan by prom day was that I would wear the strapless bra, accept the band showing, and keep my hair down, which is the plan of someone who has given up. My cousin, who is twenty two and did all of this three years before me, called at about five in the afternoon because my mum texted her. That is how I found out there is an entire product category I did not know existed. She asked me what the dress was, and I said strapless and backless, and she said "why are you not wearing a sticky bra", and I said, in this order, what is a sticky bra, do they actually work, and will it get here in time. The answer to the third one was yes, and that is genuinely why this post exists, because she told me about it and saved my entire night in about four minutes. She wore the magic padded sticky bra from @boombaofficial to her own prom, and she has worn it to every backless thing since. I ordered it in a panic and it arrived with enough time that I could try it on twice before the day, which, learn from me, do the double test, because the first time I put it on I did it wrong and it was obvious within minutes. It is $32. Practically, for anyone who has never seen one and has no idea what I am talking about, because I did not. It is two padded cups with a clasp at the front and adhesive on the back of each cup, so it sticks to you rather than to the dress. That is the fundamental difference from what I had tried. Nothing wraps around, nothing is held up by tension, so there is no band to show at the back and nothing to slide down my ribs, because there is no band at all. The clasp at the front pulls the two cups together, which is what gives you the actual cleavage, and the padding is shaped and curved rather than a flat block, so it reads as you rather than as two circles, which was my main fear. It adds up to two cup sizes. It comes in sizes from AA up to I, and in beige, sand, caramel and cocoa. Sizing note, because I got this wrong, and my cousin had to tell me twice. You choose your true size and you only size up if you are between sizes. I assumed I should size down for a smoother look and that is the opposite of correct. On the night: it did not move. Not through photos in the garden, not through standing for two hours, not through the dancing, which I did a lot of and which involved sweat, and this is the part I was most worried about, because an evening in a warm hall in July is the exact condition that kills anything adhesive. It held from 6.30pm until I peeled it off at about one in the morning. And the point is that I forgot about it, which is the entire thing. I hugged my friends without thinking about it. I turned around for photos, back to camera, without thinking about it. I did not spend one second of that night adjusting a strap or pulling something up through satin. That last part is what I actually paid $32 for, if we are being honest about it. Honest notes, because I would rather you know. Getting it off takes a minute, and you go slowly, unclasp first and then peel from the top outer edge, one cup at a time, and you use your fingertips rather than your nails so you do not damage the adhesive. Cleaning is warm water, a small amount of mild soap, fingertips only, no machine wash and no dryer, then shake off the water and let them air dry somewhere dust free, put the protective films back on and keep them in the box away from direct sunlight. Mine have been washed several times and the adhesive is still fine. They are reusable up to twenty times, which is more than enough for a prom season and a wedding or two after that. It is not for everyone physically. The brand says their products are not recommended for sensitive or thin skin, and I would take that seriously rather than deciding it does not apply to you. And if you have not used anything like this before, do the practice run. Put it on once a few days before when you are not in a rush. I am really glad I did, because the first attempt was not it. The other thing I would say, and it is not about the product at all. The dress was never the problem. The woman in the shop sold me a dress that could not be worn with a normal bra and did not mention it, and I spent three months thinking the issue was my body and the way the dress sat on it. It was not. I was one product away the whole time. That is why I am typing this much about it, because it made me genuinely angry, and I do not want the next girl standing in her room at five in the afternoon on the day of. If your dress is strapless, backless, or has a halter, or anything at all where you cannot wear a normal bra, this is the thing to sort out in February and not in July. I put the sizing, the colourways and the small things I got wrong on the page below, including exactly how I worked out my size. I have my photos back now. In every single one of them I am standing up straight with my back to the camera at least once, and there is nothing showing. Nobody can tell. That was the whole goal.