Faith4Keep's Retro Recruitment!

[lyrelyre]

Originally Posted by sherbertlemons

It varies a little from sorority to sorority and from campus to campus, but generally when a sister gets lavaliered or engaged, a candle pass is held. The sister will privately tell the chapter president that she needs a candle pass, and with my chapter they were generally held right after chapter meetings.

We would gather in a rather large circle, and a lit candle (fake, unfortunately) would be passed from sister to sister while we sang a Kappa song. The candle would be passed once for a lavaliere or twice for an engagment. (TrueBlueKappa, correct me if I'm wrong cause I can't count!)
When it arrived at the sister who the candle pass was for, she would blow the candle out. (Or in our case, turn the candle off.)

It's amazing how much less romantic a candle pass is with modern technology.

Our candle passes were very similar (we called it a "candlelight”), except that you didn’t have to tell anyone at the chapter. All of the florists in town made bouquets (just like a bridesmaid’s bouquet) with a candle in the center. They would deliver it to the chapter house and it would sit on a table in the foyer all day, so everyone would see it (and make conjectures all day about who it was). Then, after dinner, we would pass it (once around for a lavaliere, twice for pinning, and three times for engagement-they were very uncommon at my chapter for anything other than engagement). We sang our sweetheart song while it was passed around the circle.

People would talk all day about who it was – the flowers were always a clue because we would think “whose favorite color is pink” or “Doesn’t Sarah love lilies?” Ah, memories.

My favorite candlelight was a girl in the pledge class just below mine. Her big and her twin were standing on either side of her. When she was holding the bouquet for the third time they blew it out. Her boyfriend (soon to be fiancé) came around the corner in full formal military dress, bowed, drew his sword, and presented her with a gorgeous ring on the end of the sword. So romantic...