American parents are accustomed to being treated like human cash machines during prom season, spending close to $1,000 to guarantee that a high school dance doesn’t become an emotional catastrophe.

A hundred bucks for tickets, and hundreds more for fancy clothes — even the corsage costs $20. And before any of that begins, your kid wants $300 for a promposal. Wait, a what?

A promposal is an elaborate ask to the prom — a concept that first gained Web traction in 2011 and now is an institution alongside limo rentals and after-parties.

Asking someone to the prom has been tradition for as long as there have been school dances. But the concept of promposing took on new life in the digital era.

Teens now plot grandiose events to gain the attention of not only their potential date, but everyone else on social media, in turn generating YouTube channels, Twitter and, of course, listicles.

Students lucky enough to experience a promposal are sometimes on the receiving end of an outrageous, and often complex, feat of planning.

One promposal that went viral involved the purchase of Kanye West’s popular sneaker, the Boost.

Another promposal, less expensive but much more difficult to pull off, involved Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz reading a promposal script on behalf of a teenager.

For the rest, it can be expensive cosmetics, Beyonce tickets or even a puppy. One thing they all have in common is parents are picking up some, or all, of the tab.

You know something has arrived in the teen consciousness when credit card companies take notice.

Visa, which tracks prom-related expenses in an annual nationwide survey, added promposal costs to the total prom bill for the first time last year.

The company found the average American household with teenagers spent $324 on promposing.

Promposal spending varies around the country, with New England families with teenagers coming in at a whopping $431 per promposal, compared to $342 in the West, $305 in the South and $218 in the Midwest.

Promposals are so prolific that they’re becoming the most expensive part of the event.

Total spending on the prom, which includes the cost of clothing, transportation, tickets, food, photographs and the after party, is down since 2013, when it was $1,139, according to Visa.

In 2014, it fell to $978 and again last year by six percent, down to $919.

Conventional wisdom would assume wealthier families spend more on prom, and promposals, but Visa found families making less than $25,000 per year spend $1,393 on prom, compared with families who earn over $50,000 spending just $799.

Visa referred to the finding as “disconcerting,” but the study didn’t explain why this might be the case.

In fact, low income families are often encouraged to turn to charitable organizations, like Operation Prom, for free prom dresses and tuxedos. Even the New York-based nonprofit is considering expanding those services to include promposals.

“We’ve thought about these promposals over the past two years as they’ve increasingly gotten popular,” said Operation Prom founder Noel D’Allacco.

She’s working on a making her organization part of the process, and considering whether to encourage wealthier students to use her organization for their promposal, and in the process help fund prom expenses for those less well-off.

“We’ve been trying to get creative for what we can do to help that promposal come true,” she said.

At the other end of the spectrum, getting a professional to plan a promposal is an extra chunk of change.

Sarah Glick, a proposal planner at New York City’s Brilliant Event Planning, charges $495 for a concept design and a minimum $2,500 for executing the promposal. The company has been approached about a dozen times to plan a promposal, but the clients chose not to move forward due to the price.

The Heart Bandits, a Los Angeles-based proposal planning firm which charges $1,000 for promposal services, has received about 30 inquires about promposals and planned at least five, according to founder Michele Velazquez.

Despite the growing trend, not all teenagers are wooed by pricey promposals. “I’ve seen on Twitter where boyfriends buy their girlfriends hundreds of dollars worth of makeup to ask them, which I think is ridiculous,” said Meghan, 16, from Pueblo, Colo.