Formal

[prdlocal]

I just wanted to share the pain and stress of the social office with everyone else. Is anyone else around here a social chair? How do you handle planning all events like formal and date parties and socials without going insane? Oh! And if you have any other ideas for social events, please let me know!

[KSig RC]

i'm our social chair, and i know the pressures you're feelin - my boys, well they always want to get social, and so there's always work to do. OK - well we have a separate formal chair, usually a younger brother interested in social stuff, that i work with to plan. that's great. For other stuff, i just work to try to get a general idea at first (what we need where, when initation will be, when the annual stuff like greek week falls), then fill in with mixers first and other stuff second. You can always put together a date party at a bar on a weeknight (or, we use our house, but that's not an option a lot of places) w/ only a week or two of notice, but mixers sometimes require more. Then, think of cool themes, and then have the ultimate joy of watching your friends and brothers go nuts and have fun. I love it - but it can be a huge pain in the ace.

Rob

[prdlocal]

Thanks for the help Rob. I actually just finished planning and having our date party. It was a complete success: Barrell bus, hayride, and bonfire at a ranch. It was my first event as social chair. Okay, here we go... on to formal... the ultimate social chair's hell... thanks again for the help.

Amanda

[ztafairy]

Hey prdlocal! I was the Special Events Chair and I was in charge of setting up our formals and our grab-a-dates. The Social Chair was in charge of the socials, obviously! I was so worried about everyone having a good time and liking the places I picked out for our events that I was so stressed just trying to set the events up. Then I realized that I'm doing the best job that I can possibly do and if someone ends up complaining, then they don't have to come. I'm doing my job, and very well I might add, so whoever wants to complain can kiss my butt! I want to see them take over this job and see how good they do! Especially on the budget I was on. That was my philosophy.

And KSig RC is right. There is nothing better then seeing your members have fun and party, knowing that they wouldn't have a place to do this if it wasn't for you!

[ztafairy]

Also prdlocal, when I mentioned grab-a-dates before, I thought I should elaborate on what these are and maybe you can use them as an idea for a social event, if you haven't already thought of it. A grab-a-date is when we have a function at one of the bars or some other place downtown and the girls have 48 hours to find a date, usually it's 24, but that's kind of hard to do. Anyway, they find a date in this period of time and bring him/her and have a great time hanging out with the sisters and meeting their dates.

We also have Crush Parties. These are when you are paired with another one of your sisters and you find a date for this sister and bring him with you to the event and then whoever your sister brought for you, that guy will be your date for the rest of the night and vice versa. It's pretty cool and it's a lot of fun. I hope this helps you with your planning!

[QueenZTA]

Hi,
I am the Special Events Chair for my sorority and my formal was last weekend. It is a hard job and it is hard to please everyone. My chapter alone has over 100 active sisters. Of course it is more fun to see your sisters and the guys have fun. I am in charge of Formal, Semi-Formal, Date Dash, and Crush Party. I have found to effective when you choose a location where your sorority has not held an event before. Another good idea is to plan way ahead, about two months for each event, therefore everything comes out perfect. My final suggestion, if the event involves music, make sure that the DJ is good.

*Proud to be a ZTA*

[MuAZD]

I can totally understand how stressful formals can get. I'm not the social chair but our formal (or pseudo-formal as we like to call it) was a disaster. First off we were planning on going on a dinner cruise with dancing and awards on the and all that good stuff on the Spirit of Philadelphia. Well we were to have two coach buses come to get us and they showed up with one coach bus and a school bus because the other coach bus had broken down. The people on the school bus, which included me, were not very happy, but as long as we got there it was ok. About 10 minutes after we left the other coach bus broke down, so we fit as many people as we could onto the school bus and the others had to go back to get cars. Well half of us finally got there but by the time the others got there the boat had left so we totally missed the formal. But it got worse... We told the bus driver to be back around 10:30, which is the time the boat was to dock, so the bus driver walked into Philly! So we were stuck there in our dresses and tuxes for about two hours until he got back and then had a bumpy and uncomfortable ride back. None of this was our social chairs fault, but it just shows how stressful it is to plan something like this.

[DGPhoney]

Wow, sounds like you guys had arough time that nite, Did the bus company apologise orrefund u guys anything, cause thats kinda crazy. Well I hope u guys had some fun despite all the mishaps
DGPhoney~

[MuAZD]

Originally posted by DGPhoney:
Did the bus company apologise orrefund u guys anything, cause thats kinda crazy. DGPhoney~

We are getting some refund, although it's not everything we paid because "some of us got there" which is BS I think. But at this point I guess any money is good.

[SkipRock]

Form a social committee and delegate social events to committee members to plan. Usually this committee consists of members who are interested in becoming the next social chair. But make sure your committee members are following through with things.