SAN ANTONIO – A San Antonio area choir booster club is keeping the mum tradition affordable while raising money for students.
Homecoming mums — ornate strings of ribbons, trinkets and glitter worn at school celebrations — can be elaborate and pricey.
The Johnson High School choir boosters plan to make hundreds of mums this season, with prices ranging from $5 for a simple design to $65 for the most elaborate versions.
The fundraiser operates at Abiding Presence Lutheran Church on the North Side and assists around 250 choir students. It’s expected to raise around $5,000 for the program.
“We’ll make about 300 mums total for the season,” said Kerry Jonitz, the Johnson High School choir booster club president.
Jonitz said that volunteers have the process down to an organized routine.
“If we had to buy everything from scratch, it’d be about $10,000,” Jonitz said, noting the effort is “a labor of love” for the parents who volunteer.
The boosters started the mum-making program a few years ago as a way to provide low-cost options and raise funds for the choir.
Volunteers assemble the mums by cutting, gluing and stapling ribbons as well as hundreds of tiny trinkets. Then, the mums are sold to fellow families.
The cheapest mums are basic and unembellished, while the most ornate can include bells, stuffed animals, themed ornaments and team logos.
Molly Sprenger, a recent transplant to Texas and a parent of a Johnson High School sophomore, told KSAT that she was surprised by the scale of the tradition.
“I was like, ‘What the heck is a mum?’” Sprenger said, in part. “I looked on the internet, and these things can just blow up. It’s just crazy how big and how intricate everything is.”
Sprenger stated that she tried to make one herself.
“I decided to try and make one, and I ended up finding out that it was a lot more costly doing it on my own and a lot time-consuming,” Sprenger said.
Organizers say the sale helps families avoid steep retail costs while supporting the choir’s needs, from supplies to performance expenses.