Mum Wars 2023: The Race to Set the new Guinness World Record for Largest Homecoming Mum
Story originally posted on October 13, 2023 and periodically updated until February 21, 2024
I wrote this story in two parts over the course of five months. Part One is a collection of four media stories about the 2023 race to break the Guinness World Record for the largest homecoming mum corsage. I’ve listed those stories in reverse chronological order because the winner is no longer a secret. Part Two is the history of the, ahem, maxi-mum.
Part One
Official Announcement from Guinness World Records
February 20, 2024: Led by their teacher Abby Winston, a group of fashion design students at Lewisville High School in Texas, USA, have created the world’s largest homecoming mum corsage. Measuring 27 m² (290.64 ft²), it is almost two and a half times larger than the previous record.
A homecoming mum is a type of corsage given as a token of affection to a girl by her date in honour of the high school homecoming football game.
Lewisville High School’s record-breaking mum was created to celebrate their 125th anniversary.
When it was unveiled during the homecoming football game, Abby says the “whole school went nuts”.
“We wanted to go beyond traditional expressions of school pride and set a record that would not only make our school stand out, but also unify the student body in a unique way,” she explained.
“Known as the ‘Long Maroon Line’, the mum proudly represents the school's Farmer style and pays homage to 125 years of educational excellence.”
Abby says the most challenging aspect of this project was managing the logistics of the corsage’s construction and ensuring its structural integrity while adhering to a limited budget and tight timelines.
The students spent nine weeks and $800 creating it, using various materials to adorn the wooden base, including silk flowers, Christmas decorations, table runners, traditional mum ribbon, bells, glitter cardstock, and lots of “love, sweat, and tears”.
“We handpicked materials that not only screamed our school colours but also embodied that unbeatable Lewisville Pride,” Abby explained.
Coordinating the efforts of such a large group of students presented another challenge for Abby, who tried to ensure that everyone’s ideas were taken on board.
“The process was a valuable learning experience for everyone involved,” she said.
“It taught us resilience, effective collaboration, and the satisfaction that comes from overcoming obstacles to create something truly extraordinary for our beloved Lewisville High School.”
Read the rest of the story at guinnessworldrecords.com, and click here to see the actual Guinness World Record record.
photo from Axiom.com/local/Dallas
2023 Contenders that claimed to be in the Race to Break the World Record (that I know of)
CONROE, TX, October 28, 2023, Chron.com: Houston-area school aims to break world record for the largest homecoming mum
Oak Ridge High School's homecoming mum contains thousands of flowers made from folded tablecloth. Photo by Ariana Garcia from Chron.com. 2023.
The massive arrangement, the result of a months-long effort by Oak Ridge High School, measures a whopping 9,626 square feet and weighs 400 pounds. To qualify for Guinness World Records, the school had to submit photo and video documentation of the mum. Oak Ridge English teacher Theresa Neman, who proposed the project in the first place, said it could take up to 12 weeks before they know if they beat the record. So for the time being, the colossal corsage will be heading back to the lab where it was created, but senior Hunter Vallis said there are rumors that it could be donated to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Neman said they'd love to display it somewhere in the school, that is, if they can find a spot big enough to store it.
DEVINE, TX, October 18, 2023, KENS5 News: Students at Devine High School worked for almost 25 hours to create a 39-foot mum that was hung up at both the homecoming pep rally and football stadium last Friday…
LEWISVILLE, TX, October 13, 2023, FOX 4 KDFW News: A school in North Texas is hoping to break a Guinness World Record by having the world's longest mum. Lewisville High School will unveil the Texas-sized flower arrangement during Friday night's homecoming game.
Lewisville says its mum is 37.5 feet long. Overall, it’s about 290 square feet.
Part Two
TREND WATCH: Homecoming Mums as exercises in Goal-setting, Teamwork, and School Spirit
In 2023, news media across Texas jumped on stories about gigantic mums and the schools that built them. Here are some examples that made the local news:
How do they measure up? Dickinson High School floral design class II (28 ft) in 2023; Queen City High School (11 ft) in 2023; Morton Ranch High School, Katy (20 ft) in 2023; Princeton High School advanced floral class (18 ft) 2023; Midland High School (10 ft) 2023, Oak Ridge High School (200 ft) in 2023; Caddo Mills High School floral design class (20 ft) 2023; Lewisville High School (37.5 ft); 2023, Devine High School floral design class (39 ft) 2023.
While the size of these mums are extreme, the intriguing part of this trend is the extreme team approach it inspires.
Students in a welding class make the frame; students in a floral design class create the design; marketing students get out the word; sponsors and community members pitch in for materials; cheerleaders support the launch; and the entire school celebrates its unveiling. The inclusive nature of a mum project at this scale harkens back to the glory days of homecoming parades.
The more people who get involved, the more successful the outcome. The more successful the outcome, the more people get involved.
“It’s bonding," Midland High senior Macie Drummond told NewsWest 9. "Nobody has made a big mum in school before, and so for us to just collaborate and talk about ideas and see it all come together was really nice."
“I loved it. I was so proud of it. It was so worth it," Princeton High School junior Upkar Kaur told NBC DFW. "Worth all the hot glue gun burns."
"We completely smashed it," Oak Ridge agriculture science teacher Ashley Wilson told the Houston Chronicle. "It was a really cool feeling. It brought tears to my eyes when it went up. Just to see all the kids and their hard works was such a neat thing."
There’s no telling where this mum tradition off-shoot might go from here, but I have pretty good idea of where it’s been.
2022: Celebrating school spirit
Two Texas high schools showed their up-sized spirit by displaying gigantic mums as a part of their homecoming week festivities. While there may have been more, there was no detectable media frenzy as there was in 2023.
How do they measure up? Snyder High School (12 ft) in 2022; Stony Point High School, Round Rock (15.5 ft) in 2022.
2021: This was not named the Largest Homecoming Mum by Guinness World Records
This 78-foot-long homecoming mum was created in 2021 by Nancy Madsen, Corpus Christi, TX
For reasons I need to explore, this 78-foot Texas homecoming mum was created in 2021 and was never named an official Guinness World Record holder. Maybe the application got lost in the mail? Still, let’s bask in its glory and in the shade of its massive shadow.
When Nancy Madsen of Oh My Goodness Boutique in Corpus Christi, TX unveiled this mum, Texas Monthly reporter Taylor Prewitt said that this 300-pound mum could only be lifted by a construction crane. She also noted that Big Tex, mascot of the Texas State Fair, is 55-feet tall (of course) and would be dwarfed by this behemoth mum. I would pay to see a campy horror movie based on that face-off.
All kidding aside. Nancy’s project underscores a significant dynamic in the making of homecoming mums: they are rarely made by just one person.
According to the Texas Monthly story, Nancy needed help from her cousin to get the job done, just like the DIY-er moms, grandmothers, daughters, and other Texans who rarely craft in total isolation. School clubs and groups host DIY parties where they create mums to sell in support of their activities. Even professional mum-makers rely on part-time employees or seasonal help to bring a mum to life.
2021: Guinness World Records names the first “Largest Homecoming Mum Corsage” record
… for THIS pink and white monster. It was created in 2021 by Sherry Hall and the Special Education Department of the Arlington Independent School District (AISD) in Arlington, Texas, USA.
To be named a Guinness World Record holder, there must be due diligence to verify the claim. So on August 16, 2021, Guinness confirmed and recorded this mum’s measurements at 119.18 ft² (22 feet high) and deemed it the Largest Homecoming Corsage (Mum).
Photo: aisd.net. Before you go any further, scroll back up and look at the Lewisville mum again. See a familiar braid of pink ribbon woven into the “skirt” of the mum? That was a gift from Arlington, presented in support of records that are meant to be broken.
What motivated Sherry and her colleagues to attempt the world’s largest homecoming mum? First, there’s the actual reason. Prior to 2021, Sherry and her colleagues launched an annual event to raise awareness for the fight against breast cancer. They created this gigantic mum to support the cause (the event continues to this day).
Second: the other possible source of inspiration for Sherry is just a theory (or IS IT?) about what happened during the two years proceeding it.
2020: Cause and Ripple Effect
The year before Sherry built her gigantic mum in Arlington, TX was the first and worst Covid year. While neither mums nor high school football went away that fall, there was (like everything else) nothing normal about the way either tradition was carried out.
At the end of that terrible 2020-21 academic year, we promised ourselves that in Fall 2021, by gosh, we were going to smash our memories of 2020, the year of isolation and deprivation. The implication? We were going to do more than just pick up where we had left off in 2019.
And, um, where was that exactly?
2019: WhataMum
In 2019, I had an incredible opportunity to serve as the Artist-in-Residence at the Arlington Museum of Art in Arlington, TX.
WhataMum at the Arlington Museum of Art, 2019. You can read more about my exhibit on my About page and you can buy my book at lots of places.
During my residency, I debuted my multi-media art exhibit called MUMENTOUS: The Upsizing of a Texas Tradition, which included sixty of my original photographs, many of which now appear in my new book.
When MUMENTOUS first opened, the most attention-grabbing part of the exhibit was my interactive piece.
Within that piece, I included bleachers, astroturf (that I painted to simulate football field hashmarks), and a chain linked fence. On the fence, the museum team and I hung over 100 homecoming mums which were lent to us by the actual Texans who wore them. Some mums came to us from as far as 100 miles away. Some dated back over 30 years.
When Whataburger, a fast-food favorite of Texans and sponsor of my exhibit, heard about the mum installation, they enthusiastically asked if they could contribute one of their own. Of course!
And with that, WhataMum instantly became the most attention-grabbing part of my exhibit.
Built by Clyde Watts, owner of Lone Star Parade Floats in Dallas, WhataMum was made of 1,250 flower heads, 50 drink cups, 100 fry containers, 300 feet of ribbon, 80 bracelets and key chains, 165 feet of feathered fringe, and took 120 hours to build. News outlets from local TV stations to MSN.com to Yahoo.News covered the weird and wonderful juxtoposition of an 18-foot-tall, 6-foot-wide salute to Texas homecoming mums in the foyer of an art museum.
2019-2023: A Series of Fortunate Events
Let’s review what we’ve learned so far. Here are all the gigantic mums I’ve been able to track down from the past five years.
Of all the mums that were built after the Whataburger WhataMum debuted at the Arlington Museum of Art in 2019, only the Corpus Christi mum (2021) was created by a professional mum maker as a promotion for her business (and rumor has it that is the reason it was not considered Guinness-qualified). The rest were school-based mum projects, and the first of those school-based mum projects took place in Arlington ISD. Have I mentioned that the Arlington Museum of Art is located, oh, I don’t know, just a mile or two away from Sherry’s office? In other words…
Monster mums might be on me.
Or maybe not.
2015: The OG Mum?
This could be the first monster mum to be covered by the media as a news story. It was created in 2015 by Palo Duro High School in Amarillo. It measured 15 feet high and 55-inches at its widest point.
In this photo taken by the Amarillo Globe-News, then Assistant Principal Chris Paddock celebrates its christening at a pep rally. The accompanying article suggested that Palo Duro might have been the first to claim the Guinness World Record title of Largest Homecoming Corsage, but I talked to the fine folks at Guinness and they verified that the first official record-holder was Arlington ISD.
The Globe-News called it a Maxi-Mum, a term I wish I had thought of myself.
And with that, the search engines and accessible media archives hit a maxi-mum maxi-wall. But I didn’t.
1990s, aka B.F. (Before Facebook)
In a weird and wonderful “worlds collide” moment, I recently discovered that my good friend Monica knows professional mum-maker Teri, owner of Her Daughter’s Mums. Teri, an alumna of Trinity High School, makes mums for the Hurst-Euless-Bedford school district of North Texas. They met each other in the early 2000s when Monica served as Trinity High School’s dance and drill team director.
They both clearly remember that Trinity High School displayed a maxi-mum EVERY YEAR at their homecoming pep rally, which was held in the gym. The mum hung from the basketball backboard (exactly like the Palo Duro High School mum) and, as Teri remembers it, was long enough to touch the floor.
“It was huge!” Monica recalled. “I started working at Trinity in 2002, and they hung it every year I was there. It was a relic! I remember hearing that it was from the 1990s. By the time I left Trinity in 2012, it wasn’t in the best shape.”
Mums Gone By
“When a tree falls in a forest and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
Trinity High School’s maxi-mum was a homecoming tradition for close to two decades, and yet there is no Googleable evidence of it. As I think about all the versions and variations of Texas homecoming mums through time, and how few of them I will ever see in a photograph, I ask you:
“When a school builds a maxi-mum but the media doesn’t cover it and nobody posted about it in social media, did it ever really exist?”
Yes, I say. Yes, it did. Because it is recorded where it really counts: in the hearts and memories (and possibly yearbooks) of its alumni, teachers, staff, and fans.
If nothing else, that’s what I choose to believe.
Could there be other schools or organizations, in Texas or beyond, that have created maxi-mums? Most likely. Can you help me find them? Let me know in the comments below or email me at mumentousbook@gmail.com.
Shameless Plug for Mumentous
If you enjoyed reading this, I think you’ll enjoy my book, Mumentous: Original Photos and Mostly-True Stories about Football, Glue Guns, Moms, and a Supersized High School Tradition that was Born Deep in the Heart of Texas.
You don’t have to take it from me. I have loads of independent reviews like this one scattered throughout my website:
“Mumentous will attract, delight, and surprise those who think it will be yet another coverage of motherhood alone…
Libraries and readers interested in women's history, literature, and especially regional probes of women's traditions and experiences will relish Mumentous for its lively celebrations of the Texan woman and the energy she brings to the playing field of women's literature and life...”
- Midwest Book Review and Donovan's Literary Services by D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer
