Asking a girl (or guy) to the prom these days takes a level of creativity once reserved for marriage proposals. These grand gestures, appropriately called promposals, have become “a thing” across the country and tri-town students are definitely on-trend.

Old Rochester Regional senior August Russo of West Wareham started off the promposal season at TD Garden in February with a little sign and a big screen.

While at the ORR basketball team’s playoff game, Russo held up a piece of paper for the Jumbotron that had read “Abbi, prom?” in red lipstick. His girlfriend, Abbi Morrill, had already rejected the idea of a promposal in the cafeteria at lunchtime, but Russo took a chance.

“She said, 'I wouldn’t stand up if it were in front of 300 people.’ So I figured, why not do it in front of 3,000 people?”

When the camera picked him up in the sea of red T-shirts, Russo made a beeline for his girlfriend who was a few rows back.

“It was like parting the Red Sea,” said Russo. “She couldn’t say no at that point.”

With months to go until the June 4 prom, Russo set a high bar for those who would come after him, but Ryan Noonan was up for the challenge.

Noonan, a member of the Marion Fire Department, got his fellow firefighters to help him ask his girlfriend, Mia Resendes, to prom.

In March, the department parked a fire engine in the student parking lot and raised the ladder more than 50 feet in the air with a sign asking Resendes to prom. Unfortunately, the first time they set it up, firefighters had to respond to a call before Resendes could see it.

The second time was the charm (see Noonan's photo right), and by then everyone but Resendes knew what was happening.

“I couldn’t really hide it because everyone was getting hyped up about it,” said Noonan. As he walked his girlfriend out to the truck, “There were girls lining the streets to take photos. It was crazy,” he said.

In Rochester, the promposal trend hit an all-time high this year, say Old Colony seniors Chad Underhill, Jazmine Medeiros and Nicholas Costa.

While Russo and Noonan asked their girlfriends to prom, Underhill and Costa were putting it all on the line with their promposals.

Underhill ordered fortune cookies with notes inside each one asking Kristy Fitzpatrick to the senior prom on May 29.

“It just kind of popped into my head,” said Underhill, a Rochester resident. “I was thinking of things I could do to get creative.”

Due to a field trip, Underhill had to leave the cookies in Fitzpatrick’s classroom and wait until he got back to campus for an answer. Fitzpatrick unscrambled the notes and went looking for Underhill.

“She apparently came into my shop and was freaking out,” he said.

Fortunately, it was the good kind of freaking out and she said "yes" to the promposal.

Underhill said he wasn’t nervous at all. Nicholas Costa, also of Acushnet, was not so calm leading up to his big ask.

“I had butterflies and everything,” said Costa.

He asked Nichole Medeiros, a junior on his cross country team. Costa searched Pinterest and other social media to see if his idea had been done before, and he incorporated personal elements into the proposal.

On the day of the ask, he put balloons, confetti and a pink neon poster in her locker that read: “Will you run to prom with me?”

After she opened the locker, Costa appeared with her favorite candy bar and got the “yes” from Medeiros that he hoped for.

“She’s a really awesome person. I wanted to ask her out for a while,” Costa said. “I went for it and I’m glad I did.”

But promposals aren’t just for guys.

Jazmine Medeiros of Acushnet asked her friend Tom Nichols to prom.

“I told him from the start I was going to take him. He just didn’t know how I was going to ask him,” she said.

Medeiros took her promposal theme from their shared studies in Old Colony’s health careers shop with a poster asking Nichols if he would be a "lifesaver" and go with her to prom. She drew a thermometer and stethoscope on it and taped on lifesaver candies.

“I’ve always wanted to get asked in a cute way so I thought why not just ask him in a cute way,” Medeiros said.

At Tabor Academy, Alix Bersani also decided she would do the asking for prom.

“Part of me wanted to be asked, but he’s in the grade below and it’s my prom, so I might as well ask him,” Bersani said of her boyfriend, Jeremiah Adams.

Hours before a varsity baseball game, Bersani, a Weston resident, put up signs at the field that read “Miah will you swing into prom with me?”

Prom was written on the field with baseballs. When Adams, who likes to be on the field hours before the game, came out, Bersani was ready with his walk on music, “Homegrown” by the Zac Brown Band.

Adams was confused at first, but when he read the sign he ran to Bersani and, of course, said "yes."

“I was just nervous because I wanted it to work out really well,” said Bersani. “I knew he would like it because I put an effort into it.”

Bersani had a small crowd for her ask, but fellow senior Hodge Stillwell had the whole school watching when he unveiled his promposal.

Stillwell was going more for humor than romance when he asked his best friend, Joslyn Jenkins, to the prom.

“I worked hard because I wanted her to say yes,” said Stillwell. “I wasn’t sure if she would have gone if I had just asked her.”

Stillwell and his brother, a film major, created a music video with a medley of remixed songs from The Lonely Island.

“She loves that band, so I tried to think of something that she would love that would make her laugh,” he said.

In the video, Stillwell lip syncs and dances with Boston and his Dedham home as the backdrop.

He debuted the video at an all-school assembly where he got a standing ovation, and a "yes" from Jenkins. The video has 1,200 hits on Youtube, and set a high standard at Tabor.

“A lot of boys came up to me and were mad at me because their girlfriends wanted them to do something like that,” said Stillwell.

Plus, folks want a good story in the weeks leading up to their prom, held on May 20.

“With social media and stuff everyone wants to share the way they got asked,” said Bersani.

While some worry that the promposals put too much pressure on students, the promposers of ORR, Old Colony and Tabor say it’s just for fun…plus, you might just get the girl (or guy).

As Nicholas Costa says, “Go with your gut. Shoot for the stars.”