Instead, Kristen Schubert dragged along a cardboard cutout of the pop star to her senior prom at Grand Valley High School on Saturday and had a blast.

Kristen said she had written a letter to Bieber's New York record label asking him to be her prom date.

"Unfortunately … I didn’t get any response, but decided to somehow take him anyway," Schubert emailed 7NEWS.

Kristen, striking in an orange gown, carried cardboard Justin in his zippered vest, jeans and sneakers to the big dance.

When the teen and her pseudo-celebrity date joined the Grand March at the prom they "got the biggest applause out of everyone," she said.

"Everyone loved that I brought him and loved how I actually danced with him!" she said. "When his new song 'Boyfriend' came on a huge group of people came over and started dancing with us."

"He was definitely the best date at Prom!" Kristen added. "I don’t even know how many people took our picture and how many people wanted pictures with him.

"As a senior, that was my last prom and definitely worth all the weird looks!"

Kristen wasn't the only creative teen to haul a virtual celebrity to the prom last weekend.

Rachel Bird, of Kingsley, Iowa, took a cardboard cutout of former Denver Bronco quarterback Tim Tebow to her prom Saturday.

As she expected, Tebow was king of the prom.

"I think more people took their picture with Tim than they did with me,” Bird told the Des Moines Register.

She said cardboard Tebow, while a big stiff, was a low-maintenance escort.

"He was a cheap date, and he didn't talk much," Bird told the Sioux City Journal. "And when I asked him to stand in a corner, he did. I don't think it even hurt his feelings."