What do your bids look like?
 

Here's an interesting thing: when my older daughter went through formal rush at her school, the final bids the girls received varied widely. Her sorority gave out beautiful stationery with the envelope tied in a ribbon. Other girls in her group got nothing but a photocopied sheet of paper. One girl got a hand written bid on construction paper. Just wondering if times have changed. The copypaper seems a bid odd....

ZTA has an engraved, formal stock bid card that is ordered from our headquarters. i thought that every chapter used it, but when i have seen photos of Auburn bid day, i have seen girls holding up tri-folded bids that look like panhellenic might have printed them. maybe they get their real bid card at their bid day celebration or at their pledging ceremony?

In the old days, our panhell printed standard cards with the NPC crest on top with a blank for the organization to be hand printed. It would then be placed in an envelope labeled with the PNMs name. My card doesn't have my name on it but has Alpha Omicron Pi labeled on a blank. AOII also has standard bid cards available, but I have worked with chapters that get cardstock and hand write bid cards.

I'm pretty sure my chapter uses a standardized bid card. It's very formal, printed on some nice white stock with calligraphy writing and our crest at the bottom. I know a couple of the sororities on my campus hand-craft their bids. Alpha Xi Delta put little puzzle pieces painted in their colors to open and close the bid. It was ADORABLE. Phi Sigma Sigma did their on scrapbook paper, and it was really cute.

SAI bid cards are ordered directly from NH if a chapter chooses to use them. There is no mandate (as far as I know) that a chapter has to use them.

The one from NH (which is also the one I got) looks like:

Our coat-of-arms embossed in gold and centered at the top.
Then reads:

I scanned mine in and emailed it to my sister right after I got it (I was so proud!). It's now formally framed and hangs on my wall. I'll see if I can dig up a picture.

ETA: Here it is--all framed and pretty. It's not great quality and the glass causes an extra glare.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...ite/SAIBid.jpg

http://i54.tinypic.com/2h3q97q.jpg
This is my bid card I received at Bid Day! Most of the other bids I saw from other chapters looked pretty similar to this. However, I have seen DG bids that are quite different.

it seems what it says on the inside varies a bit between chapters.

I love seeing all the bids. They are so pretty!

At UF the bid cards cannot have crests/symbols/anything that you may see through the envelope and know its one certain chapter. All the bid cards have to be signed in black in as well. (This is what I was told two years ago, it may have changed!)

(In the tone of Charlie Brown's,"I got a rock,"), at Auburn back in the day...all the rushees got computer punchcards.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f3...o/DSC01744.jpg
This is my bid to DO. <3 I don't know about other DO chapters, but this is the bid I received this spring. It's really pretty and even though we're not NPC, I still adore my bid card.
I don't know if other professional societies do this, because technically Delta Omicron is a professional international music fraternity that's coed.

My bid card way back in 1996 at Ole Miss was a computer print out on an index size piece of paper. It said: Congratulations <insert name> Alpha Omicron Pi. I still have it!

Today at Ole Miss, all of the sororities use the pretty bid cards with their seal/crest/flower on them. They are very pretty and much more special I think than a print out from a computer!

You can see the AOII Ole Miss bid day card at the bottom of their website:
http://www.olemiss.edu/orgs/alphaomi...cruitment.html
Small pic but you get the idea.

Why not use lined envelopes?

FWIW (yeah, I know this is a sorority recruitment forum), our standard bid card says "Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity invites _________ to pledge himself to probationary membership in the _____________ chapter." The coat of arms appears behind the words in gray scale, and there is an RSVP info line.

Mine disappeared in a move eons ago. :(

Ole Miss Glitter-

I pledged Theta at Ole Miss in 1979 and I got the same computer printed card... and I still have mine in my scrapbook, too :D

yeah that makes sense. our envelopes were SO thick though that you couldn't see anything! they were lined with gold foil too. very pretty and special. i'll keep it forever <3

they also made us sit on our envelopes until all 800 of us had theirs! i don't think i've ever been so nervous/excited in my life! could NOT sit still!