I was letting NBH have her moment in the sun!
Three Round Parties (as much as I can remember, anyhow!): I wore a red kilt (Sinclair clan, if you know it),
with a black turtleneck and a black blazer. I
almost wore my pearls, but I was saving those for (please, oh please!) Pref. I had black hose and black shoes with just a little heel. I was already feeling a little too tall to bring out the 3" heels! These parties were an hour long:
Rubies: The singing as we entered was intense! In the background was circus type music, and we were given tickets of two different colors. We used the first ticket "to get into the Ruby Circus", and were seated with a sister on each side. The theme was that life is a circus, it takes all sorts to make up a circus, but the best circus was comprised of women like the Rubies. They served popcorn, peanuts, rootbeer floats, and Cracker Jack, with a clown tossing the peanuts & Cracker Jack. We also played games with the other tickets, and won small, Ruby-oriented prizes.
Garnets: More singing! At this point, I had one of their songs completely memorized, as it was so catchy. We were at a Parisian fashion show, "The Garnet Garment Show" - a runway was down the middle of the room, and sisters modeled outfits that college students "wear": the goth, the fraternity groupie, the too busy studying to have any fun person, and of course, the All-Around Wonderful Garnet Sister - who had her happy moments, her sad moments, liked to have fun, but still had a good GPA. All of the sisters wore their colors, a beret, and were scribbling notes like a reporter would. During the fashion show, a cheese board with crackers & olives was served, then afterwards they served quiche, and a really amazing fruit salad (not that icky sweet canned stuff!). How could I forget the Perrier, with a Garnet label and a slice of lemon?!
Emeralds: "Midnight at the Oasis" All four of my Rush Buddies were with me, all stuffed, and not very open to a desert theme. The sisters wore harem-type clothes (which looked a lot like sheets to me!), with the elaborate eye makeup and the veil over their mouths during the first part. We were each handed a dish with pita, hummus, olives and grapes, along with a goblet of grape juice. Laden down with this, we tried to sit gracefully on plump pillows, and for the life of me, I cannot remember a single thing about the skit. There was one sister for every two or three PNMs, or in our case, one sister for the four of us. The one sister made a comment that she had heard that the four of us came "as a package deal" and she could just wrap us up in a big bow - YIKES!!! We were the first four out of there.
We were encouraged to list three sororities for Pref. AGAIN, we didn't list
Emeralds, and handed our invitation lists to our Rho Chi. Lisa wrote "declines Emeralds with regrets" on her list.