Karly Evans tilted her head to the side as she compared different flower sizes. She was at the Mum Shop in Plano, shopping for accessories for her boyfriend’s homecoming garter.
“Honestly, I look for big, cool and ugly,” she said, plucking at different accessories and holding them up to her unfinished garter. “I want it to look really cute.”
Karly is a senior at McKinney North High School, and this was the second garter she’s made. She learned a lot from the first experience, which is why she was comparing the different accessories.
“You need to have enough filler, because that's the first mistake I made with my mum,” she said. “I made it all work out on top of each other and it spread it out so it can look awful.”
In North Texas homecoming mums are a Lone Star tradition that helps tie in the two major pillars the state loves: Football and fall.
But how did the mum and garter tradition become what it is today? For the answer to that question, you’ll have to go back to the early 1900s, when the first homecoming celebration was held at the University of Missouri. What started off as a simple chrysanthemum with only a few ribbons, would soon evolve into a fall classic.
Decades later, Texas would see the Midwest homecoming tradition make its way down south where the first Mums were worn in state at Baylor University in 1936 and has since then taken on a whole new meaning of school spirit.
As mums grew in popularity throughout the latter half of the 20th century, the tradition spread into neighboring states like Oklahoma and Louisiana. But while neighboring states kept the tradition to a simple corsage, Texas took it to a whole new level. As the popularity of the tradition grew, so did the average size of a mum — because everything is bigger in Texas.
By the 1980s and '90s, mums became increasingly elaborate, and real chrysanthemum blooms were replaced with artificial flowers in varying shades, selected to match school colors.
A family tradition
Plano Mum Shop co-owner Amy McCuiston has been making mums for high school teens in the North Texas area since she was in high school herself. What started as a simple homecoming tradition shared with family has grown into a nearly 40-year business that has created memories for generations.
“My mom and my aunt and I started this business when I was a sophomore in high school on the kitchen table,” McCuiston said. “And it has just evolved into this. We've grown every year.”
And with each year comes a high school student who has been waiting their turn to take a shot at the Texas tradition that has now become a rite of passage for many.
“We have had moms that have come in and told us that they wore our mums when they were in high school. And now we're doing their children's mums," McCuiston said. “It’s like they're passing on the tradition and we’re part of that.”
A twist on tradition
But while some are excited and enthusiastic about the fall tradition, there are some high schoolers who dread the idea of wearing an over-the-top ribbon to showcase their school pride — forcing parents to find alternatives to help make sure their school spirit doesn’t go unnoticed.
Lana Coggeshall, who is originally from Texas, recently moved back to the area with her family after living in Missouri. Eager to settle back in, Coggeshall introduced her daughter to the Lone State tradition but was met with some resistance.
“I bought my daughter a traditional size mum her freshman year,” Coggeshall said. “She was a little bit taken aback at the size of it. And it was a bit of a struggle to encourage her to wear it to school.”
After the first go round, Lana decided to comprise and designed a mum that would display her daughter’s school pride in a smaller, yet effective way. So instead of using large and flashy ribbons and accessories, Lana instead picked a tiny red sequin ribbon and paired it with a black and white polka dotted ribbon that displayed the phrase “Go Team” in the middle, and topped it with a solid bold red ribbon with tiny silver stars on it. It was small enough to wear around her finger, like a ring.
“This year she's a junior. I'm sort of insistent because I'm excited about mums, and I don't want her to miss out on this tradition,” Coggeshall said. “We had a conversation that I ended up saying, ‘What if I make you the world's smallest Mum?’ And she thought it was adorable and it was so small she had agreed to wear it to school.”
Showing personality
Boys don't miss out on the fun, either. They wear garters that are very similar to mums but are worn on an elastic around their arm and are typically smaller and the ribbons are shorter.
Though garters have stayed relatively tame in size, they’re frequently decked out in the same manner. The spectacular displays are only to be worn on the day of the fall homecoming game, never to the dance typically held the following evening.
And if a boy is in a relationship, then it's his job to design a mum for his girlfriend, a task that might require a lot of time and maybe some assistance.
Bilyndra Walker’s son is a senior at Arlington High School, and being an upper classman comes with the responsibility of closing out your high school career with a bang. Having a girlfriend makes the occasion much more special.
“Having a son who's a football player is a big deal,” Bilyndra said. “With this being both his final year, and he has a girlfriend, he wants to make sure that she has the biggest mum.”
Karly, the McKinney High senior, believes that garters should showcase personality rather than just sticking to the basic school colors.
“I'm just adding more to it and making sure that I have stuff that's fits his personality,” Karly said, as she continued to build her boyfriend’s garter. “And I'm making sure that it suits him and not like a basic garter, like you see every guy wearing.”
In addition to all the flash and flare mum season brings, it also serves as a time to give back to the community. McCuiston says her shop partners with schools in the area to help provide under-privileged students with mums and garters who might not be able to afford them.
“We also do this as a fundraiser through the schools,” McCuiston said. “So, 90% of the schools that we're making mums for, we're giving back to an organization. And that’s why we do this, is to make the memories for these kids and in the process of that, of giving back to all the schools.”
And while some might say participating in the homecoming tradition is solely about showcasing your school pride, Karly sees it as a way to connect with their fellow peers.
“It's kind of like something that you can cherish when you graduate high school. You're like,’ oh, this person gave me this,’” Karly said.” It’s really a bonding moment for us.”
Share your pictures of your homecoming mums and garters with us! Send them to us at digitalnews@kera.org and we'll feature them in our Weekday Update newsletter.
