for Girls
 

Girls-
I thought i would start something fun and light hearted. How many black and white dresses do you have? I know our president from last year must have had like six black dresses of every style...
Personally, i have four and am thinking of buying another one. As far as white goes, only one.
HAve fun :)

I have 3 black dresses and one white one. I only ever wear one of the black ones though. I've worn another one only once. The white dress is just so damn hard to keep clean with all the AZ dust!!! :mad:

I only have one black dress, but I have a lot of black clothes. Also, I don't have a white dress. My sisters were pretty lenient about wearing white. They told me that as long as my outfit was white, I'd be fine. I ended up wearing a white tank top and white shorts. Oh well. At least I know I'll be properly dressed next time we go through initiation!

Greek to Greek,
That1LoudChick

I only have three white dresses - the dress I initiated in (somewhere at my parent's house...I think), a gown from my pageant days, and my wedding dress!

Now that I think about it, I have only three black dresses, too. One of them is an awesome BCBG with a beige stripe starting at the shoulder and twisting from front to back until it ends in flare at the skirt (hard to explain, but very cool!)

I have 9 or 10 dressy black dresses, some of which have a bit of color. One off-white dress, my high school graduation dress. If I ever want to elope, I'm all set.

I just gave away my lone white dress (Initiation) a few weeks ago to the Salvation Army :(

I have 3 black dresses... one has a tan flower pattern on it and an asymmetrical hemline... that was my va-va-voom sexy dress for dates (when I was single) and semi-dressy night functions. I have another simple knee-length silhouette dress from Express that I can wear to work that's just plain black with white piping around the hem. The third one is a full length sheath dress with some sort of a pattern on it... it's been so long since I wore it I don't even remember. Now that I'm out of college, the opportunity to wear formal or semi-formal dresses are few and far between!

Actually, I need to buy one more... I discovered when I had a scare with my Dad's health that I don't have any dresses that I feel are appropriate for a funeral... it's morbid to think about when going shopping, but it's something I should probably have.

I have about a zillion black dresses - which is really weird for someone who doesn't wear skirts :) If anyone needed to borrow a black dress for pref - they came to me.

Only one white dress though - my wedding dress. (I had a white blouse and skirt for ritual.)

I also have a really nice black and white dress - the top is white satin and is sleeveless, the skirt is black chiffon. That's my favorite :)

I have 2 black dresses and 3 white ones, and I absolutely hate all the white ones. It's my goal this summer to have a pretty, semi-formal white dress to wear. Somehow, almost every girl in my chapter has found these beautiful, floor length, formal and/or semi-fomal whites, and everyone just looks to pretty. Then comes me in my plain jane A-line... not a pretty picture.

I have one cute black dress.. and will be getting another one for Pref this year. And I have one beautiful white formal dress with tiny beaded silvery-white roses on the bodice that I wore to my boyfriends fraternity formal a year ago (their formal is called the White Rose ;) )

That is a good point - I had to make the shopping trip with a specific funeral in mind, and it was not a good time for anyone involved.

I have like 5 black dresses - I like black dresses.

As for whites, I don't even have a dress, I have a skirt and I usually wear a sweater set with it for ritual activities. I have another skirt that I am getting rid of because I hated it.

GAP and J.Crew both have a lot of white attire, for those who need them for rituals. If I was a PNM and found a set of whites I liked, I think I would buy them now and just return them if I joined a house that didn't wear white - it is so hard to find cute whites during ritual times.

I only have two black dresses, and one white one. I'm buying at least one more of each this summer. I found a dress at the Gap that would have been PERFECT if it had come in white, but unfortunately they only had it in black. :(

No kidding! I had the same white dress all through college for ritual, and I hated it. Not to mention, almost half of my pledge class all had the same dress (As GP can attest... finding whites for ritual is hard...but finding white dresses in winter in Wisconsin is even harder!!). I held onto it, though... because it was my initiation dress. I did cry a little when I gave it to the Salvation Army!

Wow, I feel like a bad sorority girl.

I have 2 black dresses, but one is velvet, and the other is sleveless.
I used winterwhite (cream??) color for my initian/pinning. it was the middle of winter, and we had a week's notice to get the stuff. i was lucky i found that one.
i recently bought another white dress, but it has flowers at the bottom...i think i'm going to try and get away with it for ritual.

thats me-forever trying to get away with as much as possible

edited to add:
as a side note, do you guys really wear all black to funnerals?? i flat out refuse to wear all black. you should be celebrating the person's life, and the fact that they are in a better place. i already told friends/faimly that no one is to wear black to my funneral (not that i plan on having it anytime soon, but just in case.....)

just my humble opnion.:D

why i have 3 white dresses is beyond me, i've only worn one for rutuals. my favorite is flowy and more of an ecru than white. earthy.

but black dresses, i have about 5.

:) cheers gc.

I have 2 white dresses...the one I got initiated in and the one I was made an alumnae in. 3 zillion black ones though...best investment for new members...a plain white shift dress (sleeveless) and a little white cardigan. You'll wear it, even if you're not getting initiated!!! :)

I have 4 black dresses in various levels of dressiness and 1 white dress left over from highschool graduation that is big and ugly. I LOVE all my black ones though and dont have enough chances to wear them.

I have 4 black dresses...and in addition I have a full length black skirt with matching top that I have also gotten away with as a black dress...and then there are my just tons of black dress shirts and black slacks...As for a white dress I do not have one yet...but I will in less then a year (my wedding is in June of 2004)...

Funeral and Question
 

Actually, in my family it's very disrespectful to not where all black during a funeral as well as the wakes. Then again, it may just be my family and our heritage.

Also, do you have to wear dresses to your rituals? Are your sororities strict about that? As I said, Phi Gam is pretty lenient about it so it's more likely that you'll see one of the new initiates or sisters in pants as opposed to a skirt or dress.

Where I am originally from, it's OK to wear non-black to the viewing, but for adults it's black all the way at the funeral. I sometimes feel odd about this though, seeing as so much of my (and my office mates') everyday wardrobe is black and I look pretty good in it. I've told my friends (who also wear lots of black) that they should all wear yellow if they want to make a mourning gesture since most people look so crappy in it.

This is a holdover from the days when you didn't wear black before a certain age - I still remember my mom being shocked at seeing a small child in a black shirt w/ jeans.

I usually try to wear black pieces - for example, for my cousin's grandfather's funeral, I wore black pants and a plain sweater to the visitation, and a black skirt with a cream sweater to the funeral. However, I think at some funerals, when you are in "mourning," it is only appropriate to wear all black. I would have loved to wear a pink sweater to my boyfriend's funeral because he called me "The Pink One" sometimes because I had so much pink, but I am sure his family would have found that very disrespectful, so I wore all black - a black suit with a pink shell to the visitation, and a black dress and cardigan to the funeral.

my mom used to say, "kids don't WEAR black!" I got my first shirt in college. More because I was just used to not buying black than anything else.

and yeah, of course I'd wear black to a funeral.

My chapter used to be VERY picky about our whites. ONLY dresses, no skirt/blouse combos, ONLY white hose, ONLY white closed-toed shoes. We also had a rule about no tank tops for sisters in general, though, until a year or two before I was initiated, though (fall 2000.)

I wouldn't necessarily wear black to a funeral, but I would wear conservative clothes and no bright colors. If it was my funeral, I wouldn't care what people wear, and I don't think most of us would . . . it's more about not offending the relatives of the person. I think this is something that will be changing in the coming years, though. Black used to be off-limits for weddings and now people wear it all the time. I can imagine funeral dress ettiquette changing the same way.

As for ritual wear . . . I'm going to admit that my chapter is very, very easygoing about wearing white dresses. It's almost impossible to find white dresses in Wisconsin in November (initiation season), so if we required our initiates to wear white dresses we probably wouldn't be able to initiate them until May! We don't require white or even off-white clothes, just pastels. We don't require dresses; skirts will do. Shoes don't have to be white. I was initiated in a khaki skirt and a lavender sweater. This is probably against national policy (I don't really know), but it's really, really just not practical to require whites for everybody, let alone get more specific than that.

For funerals... I usually wear mostly or all black. A black pantsuit with white or grey blouse, a black skirt or pants and blouse... depends on the weather and how well I knew the deceased. (For a family member, all or mostly black. If I'm just dropping by a wake or making a shiva call where the deceased is someone I scarcely know, I don't worry so much, but I still wear something relatively somber - that's not the time for the bright red hootchie mama dress :) )

I distinctly remember, when I was about 8, getting dressed to go to a relative's funeral. Little girls don't wear black :) so I had not a thread of black clothing... my mother told me that it was acceptable for young girls to wear white, as it symbolized purity. *shrug* I wound up wearing a grey sweater and skirt.

As for ritual wear... we had a thread on this not too long ago, that got out of hand (people revealing way too much about their ritual gear) and had to be locked... so take care what you say in that regard :)

Wow......I own 0 black dresses. None! I need to get on that. *pets her credit card and says "I'm sorry, baby! I don't mean to hurt you....I just can't help it!"

I always borrowed black dresses for pref.

My white dress was a hand-me-down from an older sister that I absolutely loved. I wore it for every ritual my entire college career. :)

I have one white dress. One black dress for ritual, and about three other black dresses not apropriate for ritual. They look great at semi-formal though!


Terri
Archon
Zeta Omega Chapter
U of M Dearborn

Re: a peek into my closet...
 

Be glad you didn't, or you would have been walking around like Hester Prynn in Nathanial Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Though I suppose that too would have been a shout-out to your grandmother's career.

That sounds so much like my grandmother! She was an amazing woman. The evening after the funeral, we all went out to her favorite resteraunt for beer & pizza and toasted Gran and her life. It sounds like your grandma was an awesome woman, too.

I have like 6 black dressses but no white dress!
No white dress for me..although i should buy one!!!

:)

I have one black dress, but think I'm buying a new one this year as for white none, i generally wear a white skir with a white top, different everytime

I have seven black dresses. I know, I know, I LOVE shopping!
One for every day of the week...hee hee! ;)
2 are strapless,
1 is one shouldered,
1 is halter--> you can see it here
1 is super plunging (tres sexy! I call it my "Samantha" dress ;))
1 is plain with straps and
1 is with straps and sort of Spanish flamenco dancer looking (it is shorter in the front, longer in back which is a nice look for dresses, ......just not for hair...i.e. mullets...HA HA!)

I just bought a white one on Tuesday. It is sort of Roman goddess looking - very pretty.
I also have a formal'ish white dress, but I don't really occasion to wear it. I suppose it would do as a simple wedding dress in a pinch.

After some closet exploration, I have more black dresses than I thought.

• black stretchy strapless dress from the Limited, has criss-crossing sequins and is just below the knee
• same dress as above in plain cotton
• somewhat halter-necked (goes around neck, but doesn't tie) black cocktail dress with sparkly bust
• plain sundress with spaghetti straps, empire waist, and criss-cross bust
• black strapless evening gown - fitted with beading and has a small beaded train