Friday, Oct. 25, the Best Buddies club held their annual Halloween Dance here at Ludlow High School. This was the fourth year that Best Buddies put together this event. The Halloween Dance is an event for all members of the Best Buddies club. As the monthly event for October, this dance is one of the most anticipated of the year. Once again, the dance was a huge success.

Throughout Ludlow High’s cafeteria, students were seen dressed in all kinds of elaborate costumes such as unicorns, to baseball players, to even Santa Claus. One of the buddies, Dominic Jessup says that his favorite costume was an ice cream cone.

Some people dressed in partner costumes as well. Grace Chartrand and Caleigh Bingham dressed up as Buzz and Woody from Toy Story. They even wrote “Andy” on the bottom of their shoes. My friend Danielle and I partnered up as Mario and Luigi from Super Mario Bros.

Jessup noted that his favorite part of the Halloween Dance is the snacks. Food is always provided for everyone who attends the dance. Generally, there are snack foods such as chips along with sweets cookies and brownies. People in the club sign up to bring food that they either bake or buy from the grocery store.

This year, the cooking club helped out by donating rice crispy treats and decorative pretzels that students made. Sophomore Kylie Montemagni says that she could hardly keep herself from eating them while she was helping set up for the dance.

A lot of help is need to create this spooky night. Club advisor Jennifer Bedore describes what was needed to host this event.

“We had to plan for advisors for things such as setup and cleanup, snacks, a DJ, and cafeteria space,” she says, “We also had to communicate with other schools to ask for their participation.”

She also explained that the people in Best Buddies planned everything during their meetings. The date for the dance was picked no later than this past June.

The Halloween dance is a very popular event on the Best Buddies calendar. It is a great way for students to spend a fun night of dancing and socializing not only with their buddies, but with others as well.

“I like this event because of the fact that it’s a dance, I get to meet new people too,” Jessup says.

At the dance, there were some members of the Best Buddies clubs in other towns near Ludlow. Students from Belchertown and Chicopee schools attended. Rianna LaFleche from Belchertown says she was really impressed with our dance.

“The dance is so much fun! Everyone is so inclusive. I wish we had events like this at my school,” says Rianna while swaying to music in her Monsters Inc. costume.

Next year, Bedore is hoping to expand the amount of people that were at the dance by inviting more towns. The attendance this year wasn’t quite as large as the club is used to. Bedore thinks it has to do with a lack of time for other schools. She thinks that this year other chapters weren’t fully up and running yet so they weren’t able to make this event.

“Maybe contacting the schools earlier on in September will give them more time to prepare and attend the dance.” says Bedore

With about 100 people attending the dance, it was still a success. Bedore says she was proud of what the club was able to put together.

“Everyone there had fun,” says Bedore.