Full Frills Recruitment
 

So the Texas thread this year has had some awesome history in it. So as jot to side track it, I'd love for anyone who was active during full frills recruitment to explain what it was like and what made it so "frill"?

After the first day of rush, we did not wear the Panhellenic Name tag distributed at orientation. Instead, each house prepared hand made nametags for each girl who returned. These were elaborate, geared to the day's party theme. The active picking you up had it in her hand and pinned it on you as you entered and took it off you as you left. I remember name tags in the shape of sorority flowers and symbols, circus themed, related to the philanthropy, etc--a different one for each day you returned. They were saved, along with anything given to you at pref (flower, pearl, symbol) and you got them all on Bid day at the chapter you pledged. After I became an active, I realized just HOW MUCH TIME the artists in the house spent on those dang nametags. The blanks were all prepared during work week, and that morning when we got our return lists, the calligraphers frantically filled in the names. The next morning, we disposed of any that were not returning.

We also had food and drink refreshments--not just ice water-- at each house each round after open house. Some were more elaborate than others--fruit skewers, mini-cupcakes, cookies in the shape of a symbol, lemonade, but all were nice, particularly in the 104 degree heat that radiated from the sidewalks in Stillwater in August.

Decorations had a much more "homemade" look than today's Pinterest inspired concoctions, but they were certainly time consuming to create.

There was a LOT of singing. Even during the early rounds--you would be chatting with a active, and they would all suddenly burst into one of their sorority songs--a bit disconcerting the first time it happened, but fun to hear all of the sorority songs, some sweet, some hilarious. It was like sitting in a musical where conversation is happening, and suddenly someone is singing about being in love. Lots of singing at pref.

A lot of matching clothing, but they still do that now, don't they? I remember matching at the last two rounds, but not the first two, but being dressed up for all rounds. No shorts, No T-shirts, no flip flops--Lordy no. We wore dresses or dressy slacks each round + hose + pin.

Seconded!

I was an active in the 80's but our recruitment was pretty low key. The panhellenic at the school I advise now is very strict on the no-frills recruitment to the point where alums aren't allowed to contribute food or anything, only one recruitment t-shirt is allowed, and the panhel head goes around and actually measures the room decorations to make sure they conform with the rules and takes them down if they don't. You are allowed to have a theme for Bid Day but not for recruitment. I guess I get why they do it, but looking at recruitment pics from around the country, recruitment at this school is a lot less fun.

I'm not sure if it qualifies as "full frills", but it felt pretty damn time-consuming.

I was an active at UCLA in the early aughts (is that what we're calling them now? I can't remember). The decorations on most of the days were pretty over-the-top, but in retrospect seem super homemade. We did a lot of the Stumps party supply stuff, or homemade stuff that looked a lot like Stumps stuff. If you are not familiar with Stumps, it's basically a bunch of giant cardboard decor like this:
http://www.stumpsparty.com/images/it...12spkcs09l.jpg
and this:
http://www.stumpsparty.com/images/itm_img/9p339kc.jpg

For slideshow day, we spent HOURS AND HOURS covering all the walls in one of our rooms with a billion double-sticky mounting squares and 8-foot high rolls of heavy black paper. For this day, we also had a 10ish minute, fully choreographed dance number that we (and I mean EVERYONE in the house) performed along the sides of the walls while the PNMs watched our slideshow. We typically re-wrote the lyrics to 4 or 5 songs and sang them while we did our little dance moves. It's been more than 10 years since I've been an active, and I'm pretty sure that I can still do some of those songs, singing and dancing, in their entirety.

For other days, I recall filling so many helium balloons that the entire ceiling was completely covered, renting lots of live trees to fill the house one of the days, wearing 100% matching outfits, etc. We were, however, limited to water with only some garnish (lemon, lime, etc.) for most days. Pref we could give some kind of sparkling beverage.

While far from perfect, my own recruitment was full of frills. I offer this without having read it in a very long time: honeychile's rush.

The balloons were still in effect at UGA in the early 90's. Girls who could tie knots were in high demand
I was a terrible rusher, but I could be counted on to get up at 5AM and inflate and tie hundreds of balloons. The second round, back then was skit. And the decor for those was elaborate. We had a movie theme that required applying movie posters to all the walls.

Going through rush, one house had an outerspace theme. Lots of stars and glow in the dark. One house did an SNL skit and lined the room with pillows and sleeping bags. Kind of a sleepover feel.

Like dress at prefs was in the final year when I rushed. Big hair and puffy sleeves were the order of the day.

I shudder to think how much my mother laid out for my dresses. That was back in the days when Lord and Taylor had a great dress department. Sigh... I had some really pretty clothes....

You should've seen the sets for skits! We had a gorgeous backdrop of a showboat for our Southern theme. The stage was surrounded by real magnolia flowers. The dresses for the Belle singers were professionally made!
Somehow we made it seem like it was night, complete with twinkling lights and a hidden tape of chirping crickets, as rushees came across the pier into the showboat.

I can recall others over the years. Every KD chapter I was around did Wizard of Oz and had elaborate sets. One Tri Delt chapter had an incredible circus backdrop and other props. One Phi Mu chapter had a Christmas theme with bunches of Christmas trees and white lights!

This is actually better than cat suits, I'm really jealous. Sounds like a lot of fun but also very high stress.

What Carnation said!

Mine was frilly, but we were sooo jealous of some of the SEC chapters! Skits were mini-Broadway musicals! Sets were worthy of the Tony Awards! Tons of silver (not plate!) and china were visible everywhere!

One thing I remember from cleaning out an old storage unit for our chapter was at least 20 short stools which were used for recruitment about 10 years prior to my time. Couldn't have a sister sitting on the floor, could we?

Don't forget the yard routines! At FSU the sororities have beautiful houses and yards and used them to full advantage. The rushees would assemble on the street sidewalk and at the appropriate time the sorority's members would burst out of the house in choreographed splendor that rivaled any Busby Berkley song and dance-singing and dancing their little hearts out. And of course the outfits were themed. After the performance the rushees were escorted, one by one, up the house sidewalk into the house by a member. At the party's conclusion, each rushee was escorted by her hostess out of the house, down the sidewalk to the street sidewalk and bade goodby. The sisters would line the house sidewalk from street side toward the house and when enough had assembled, would start to sing a catchy farewell song. It was spectacular!

We were particularly lucky because the house is on a slight hill and has a raised elevation, so sisters were easily seen by the rushees on the street below. The front doors are double, and there are two sets of French double doors on either side of the front of the house, that lead out onto a deep front porch. Sisters would stream out of those three sets of doors, criss crossing on the porch, down the stairs, to their place on the lawn. Like I said, Busby Berkley would have had shivers running up and down his spine!

One of my favorite stories you have relayed before are the Sigma Chis across the street and "their" routine. :D

I would have loved to see some of these show that the sororities put on.

Now the shows might have kind of sucked because how many college-aged girls can write an incredible skit? But we could decorate and bake!

Ugh. I'm being taken back in time to redecorating our chapter room. Seriously. No. Sleep.

I remember that there were 4 sororities, and 4 rounds of Rush (yes, it was that long ago). Most Recruitment events took place off campus in Alumnae homes or at locations in the town (like the Country Club). Each sorority was assigned one night to provide transportation to the events. The sorority had to provide automobiles that were all the same color- white, black, red, blue. It looked very impressive!!

All of the Rushees would wait in the lobby of the dorm they were all staying in, and when their name was called, they got into the car waiting at the end of the sidewalk. The whole cavalcade then pulled out together. Rushees dressed up, either in dressy shorts, skirts or dresses. The sororities had almost totally matching outfits each day. Yes, it sounds corny, but looked amazing!

Yes, there were skits and decorations and food......not the $1,000s of dollars spent at SEC schools, but a great deal for the size of our school and Greek life.

For Bid Day, each sorority took a different part of the grassy square in front of the Student Union, holding large letters, signs, balloons (I remember the Tri-Deltas had dolphins!) and t-shirts. The Tri-Deltas also wore dresses. It was the late 80s, so there were puffy sleeves, overskirt thingies, polka dots and BIG hair. Two groups wore matching Bid Day shirts and shorts (I think khaki), and then the 4th group wore matching t-shirts and non-matching bottoms (some wore jeans, khaki shorts, jean shorts, etc...).

Bids were given to the Rushees inside the lobby, then the doors were opened, and a flood of Rushees streamed out, running to their new sisters. There was lots of screaming, jumping and picture-taking.

I've been told that now all events take place on campus, no more skits, videos and small craft for philanthropy and minimal decorations. No food at any round but Preference.

I think I've told this story, but we had a "semi-frills" rush in the 80s, meaning that the actual dollars spent were limited, but people were allowed to receive token gifts (a flower, a hand-made booklet, etc) and we were allowed to go nuts with the decorating as long as it was done with very little money.

The thing was, at the last pref party, you could SEE where the girls had been by the "token" gifts they were carrying.

Our sorority was the "safety" sorority for a lot of girls - we lost a lot of our rush crushes to the Chi O's and Thetas, who were considered "top tier". It was the very last preference party of what is one of the longest rushes in the country (at least in the number of parties - we had either 16 or 19 sororities at the time and 4 rounds of parties, no photos and no resumes). I was last-minute co-rush chairman (the elected chair dropped out of school for the term) and also the only calligrapher, so I was beyond exhausted and cranky. The girl sitting across from me was cute as a button, sitting ramrod straight, poised and perfect. (We, on the other hand were known as the more relaxed "fun" girls). She was clutching a book whose cover I couldn't see, and a yellow carnation tied up with Chi O yellow-and-white ribbons.

"I am SO torn about which sorority to choose."

I looked her in the eyes, shook my head, and said, sarcastically "Don't kid yourself. You know exactly where you want to go."

Later, I felt bad for having been so rude to her, but it had been a LONG rush.

On bid day, this same person came running into the suite (each sorority went out and collected it's PNMs, rather than have a big campus get-together like they do now). She ran right up to me, and gave me a big hug.

"I honestly didn't know what I was going to do until you said 'You know exactly where you want to go'!!!!! I wanted to go ASA but my friends were telling me to go ChiO. Thank you so much!!!"

Okay then.

But she did become our President, so there's that.

Speaking of favors
 

When I went thru, Alpha Sigma Tau gave out notepads with their name (written out) and mascot on them.

After rush, I crossed out the "Tau" on all the pages and wrote "Alpha."

I promise this wasn't as snarky as it sounds. :p

I love this. Glad it worked out!

But it's totally weird....

Since the girls are now advised (by we here at GC) to carry bottles of water in their recruitment tote bags, they might not even be getting water or ice at their Ice Water Teas ... ;)

Hey, it was a perfectly good notepad that I wasn't about to waste. Plus their mascot was cute :-)

I will not miss the skits....for every one that was funny, informational, and well done there were 20 that had no theme but involved lots of singing and boody shaking dancing for no reason...

I am old...

Oh those boys! They had our yard dances down pat. They also perched themselves on their porch roof with numbered poster board and rated the rushees as they descended to the sidewalk. Great if you are deemed a 7 or up, not so good if they did not appreciate your less obvious attributes.

I echo much of the same shared here when it comes to frills. The first two years or so I was on "the other side" of recruitment we also had "Open Houses" too, which elaborate decorations and separate themes were put up the night before Open House...and we had matching outfits for Open Houses as well. We utilized our back yard and downstairs study as much as possible for Open Houses. One was a casino theme and another was a general college theme. Then to decorate the house and get ready after Open Houses were always a chore.

Dyeable shoes to match the jewel-toned dresses were an absolute and we were 100% matching from head to toe each day.

Ice sculpture and "champagne" (pink punch) fountain for preference and we had a whole theme set around "Coca Cola" and was the only chapter to serve Coke on tour day, which was called "Coke Day" in the house.

Big banners to hang and outside decor to make sure looked just right. Preference was so awesome with each house bathed in some kind of candle light. Tri Delts had a candle ceremony around a wishing well and a balloon to let go with a wish; DGs would set their anchor in front of their house on fire (it was really neat); Pi Phis did kind of a wishing ceremony with burning a piece of paper...it may have been arrow shaped...we did a "fireside" and on the hill right across the house we would spell out our letters in luminaria. Of course it was the bursting with soft songs for each house and tears galore! So hard for the Rho Chis to not cry at their own houses if they happened to have to take a group there for preference ;)

The PKA house was one of our neighbors...I will never forget sophomore rush coming out of the house for our first preference round, in our big preference dresses and candle light ablaze and all of a sudden in their courtyard you could hear the loud whir of their lawnmower. LOL!! Memories.

Our first party was tour (we had suites at my school then) and actives wore a "Sunday" dress. We had matching outfits (red Sailor suits!) for the "coke" (yes, everyone served little bottle cokes and we had to be sure no one took the napkin with them) first party. Got to wear cocktail dresses for theme (big elaborate skit and decorations) and matching long dress for Pref. This was the late 70s / early 80s so the Pref fabric was some synthetic material -- hot in the South and there was lots of static electricity involved! The sailor suits were long sleeved and heavy cotton, way too hot for August in a room stuffed with people. I'm so envious when I hear about T-shirts and shorts!