Every year, as homecoming season comes around, a group of moms, the ‘mum moms,’ crowd into the mum room tucked away in the English hall, prepared for the rush of mum and armband pick ups from students. Ribbons, bells and plastic flowers start to pile up, and the mum moms continue the tradition.

Each mum is unique to describe the person who wears it, and the moms actually start preparing for the next homecoming shortly after the current one ends. 

“As soon as homecoming ends in the fall, we take a week off, and then we come in and do an inventory,” manager of the mum room Whitney Braden said. “We go on a big shopping trip and go buy all of the leftover homecoming items we can and get it ready to start building the bases for next year.”

The mum room works like a workshop: orders come in, decorations get sorted and the moms build each of the mums individually by hand. Peak activity occurs the closer Chaps get to Homecoming. The moms volunteer their time to work in shifts to make sure everything goes smoothly.

“We do everything in shifts,” Braden said. “I don’t know that I’ve single-handedly ever made a mum from start to finish, it would probably take me around three hours.”

The mum room used to be the robotics room in the 2010s. Now, the room is mostly seasonal, quiet most of the year but very much alive as Homecoming approaches through October.

“This room has been in existence since the robotics building was finished, I think that’s around 2019,” Braden said. “The oldest volunteer I know has been here since 2014, so that’s the latest that we date back from.”

Oftentimes, the most unique requests come through earlier in the school year.

“We had a really fun request a couple years back in September,” Braden said. “It was a supersized mum, with the biggest bear and flower possible, with lights. The senior who requested it wanted to have her mum design after all the fast food places in her area. We designed it around Whataburger, Chick-fil-A, Honey Ham and Starbucks. It was pretty fun.”

The moms are completely self-sufficient. The only funds that they get are from the money that they make from the mum orders. Students purchase mums directly through the mums room, with prices varying depending on size and complexity. The more money generated, the better the mums will be next year.

“We sell doubles and supers, which are the biggest mums, and those will be customized by a small group of ladies in the room who only create those,” Braden said. “The supers are the ones which get us the most money.”

The moms aren’t the only ones who love the mums.

“It’s fun to order one, especially one of the bigger types, because they get designed to be how I want them, so mine can stand out,” Junior Meredith Hudson said.

The mum room will close for a brief break after homecoming before they start on next year. It’s a seasonal commitment that keeps the tradition going, year after year.