I know we're sick of this, but....
 

Okay, here's the deal... My sorority is ina formal recruitment rut. Basically, we ALWAYS come across as the cute sorority because that really is what we are. We are the nice girls with the best retention rate on campus. However, many rushees don't want to join the "cute girls" they want to join the sororities that appear more sophisticated and classy. However, our entire recruitment notebook has cutesy ideas (pj party night, disney night) and I can not think of anything to change our image from cutesy to classy! Any ideas????

For formal rush:
-New Year's Eve (silhouette of a skyline of the wall, classy dresses, Martinelli's)
-New Orleans (jazz music, beignets, coffee ... you can also do Mardi Gras)
-Coffeehouse (coffee of course, wear black)
-Summer picnic (sundresses, finger foods, lemonade)
-New York City (NY skyline, signs saying "broadway" and other big streets)

I know, cutesy only goes so far! :p FuzzieAlum had some great ideas...2 other ones I thought of are Hollywood Premiere or a Paris/Europe/world tour theme.

Ooh, a Paris rush theme would be so cool! I wish my chapter had done something like that!

Not that I can speak a word of French, mind you ...

WOW! New Orleans and New York are AWESOME ideas!!!!!!! Thank you soooo much!

Another fun idea is to do a Casino Night or a mocktail party. We did "Around the World with D Phi E" for informal recruitment one year, but we did it like formal. Each night, we had a different city to visit. It was tons of fun. The first night, we gave each girl who came a little passport. Then, each night they came back (there were 5 nights), their passport got a stamp. Girls that ended up pledging us to this day still have that little passport book.