Just saying “Will you go to prom with me?” isn’t good enough anymore. Students have found more creative ways to pop the question via fun signs and funny sayings.

Senior Weston Beckham asked his girlfriend, junior Angel Moraga, to prom in his garden. His green thumb and a lot of patience allowed for the prom proposal to happen.

“Angel, her favorite fruit is the strawberry, and so I came up with the brilliant and creepy idea to plant strawberry seeds in my garden last year in the shape of the word prom,” Beckham said. “And earlier we were in the garden picking plants, and we got to the strawberries and they said ‘Prom?’ ”

For the creative theater student, just spelling out the request wasn’t enough to ask his girlfriend to prom.

“I said ‘I will be berry excited to go to prom with you,’ and that’s how that happened,” Beckham said.

Beckham isn’t the only student to use a pun to ask someone to prom. Junior Alan Orwick mixed his job with his proposal.

“I work at Bahama Bucks,” Orwick said. “I had a sign that said ‘We’d look like a million bucks at prom’ when I gave her her snow cone.”

Unlike Beckham and Moraga, Orwick wasn’t previously in a relationship with his date, so he wondered if she would say yes.

“At first I was kind of nervous because I didn’t know how it would go,” Orwick said. “But after it was over, I felt relieved that it went as planned.”

On top of the nerves that come from waiting for an answer, there can also be the daunting task of breaking the boy-asks-girl stereotype.

“Some people thought it was weird that I asked him to prom, but I didn’t care,” junior Katie Hebdon said.

Hebdon asked her boyfriend of five months to prom since he attends Leander High School. Sophomore Clay Martin is also a baseball player, so Hebdon created a baseball-themed sign that she held up at one of his games.

“I’m excited,” Hebdon said. “I’m proud of him. He’s sweet and he treats me well. He’s funny and he’s cute, obviously. Being nervous about asking him was worth it.”

Senior Christina Lehner is another girl that initiated the prom proposal.

“I got some of her friends to hold up eight colored posters in rainbow order that said ‘You’re lesbian, I’m lesbian, lesbian this together, prom?’ ” Lehner said. “I also got her favorite Starbucks drink and a cheer bow that had ‘prom?’ on it.”

Like Beckham, Orwick and Hebdon, Lehner got a yes as the answer to her question.

“I just kind of do what I do, regardless of what people think,” Lehner said. “A girl asking another girl to prom is just the same as a boy asking a girl. Both have to be creative, both have to plan it, and both are asking the same question.”