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Things may be different now, but when I was at Valpo, most fraternities would allow you to lavalier a girl and give her your letters. My now-husband and I picked out new letter sweatshirts together (his letters) the week after we were lavaliered. I pinned him the next summer (local), and he pinned me the January after that. And he did wear a screen-printed sweatshirt with my letters on it, not sewn letters, though that was rare even when we had the locals.
I would regularly wear his pin with a nice shirt and nice pants whenever they had pledge recitals or Musicale each semester. It was an honor to do so. ('course, this meant he had to borrow his brother's/best man's pin for our wedding because we forgot his in my jewelry case at home, oops!) And for his birthday last year or the year before, I bought him the crown set of his pin.
I think a lot has to do with whether you're in a greek org of your own, what your campus tradition is, what your org tradition is, etc. Since letters came with lavaliers, most women didn't receive pins; lots of guys just went straight to engagement. Those of us who did get pinned treated those pins with respect and honor.
Yes, you'd occasionally get people who would lavalier someone and they'd wear letters for years and then break up, but then again people break off engagements too. -shrug- I don't know whether lavaliering was a bigger or lesser deal on our campus compared to others.
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