I will preface this with saying that I LOVED my experience as a Pi Phi overall, and I am still very active as an alum and a very proud Pi Phi. However...
When I pledged in the early '90's, our bid day was HORRIBLE. The beginning wasn't so bad -- all of the rushees are in a huge auditorium in the middle of campus, and there is a large lawn out front where all of the sororities show up with balloons and signs and shirts for the new pledges, and sing/chant while there waiting for the new pledges to come out. The fraternities usually show up to check out all of the new pledges as well
Anyway, they handed out our bids and made all of us sit on them. They then reveiled the houses of the Rho Chis. After that, we all opened our bids at once, and of course total chaos ensued, some crying, some screaming, ect. I was ecstatic to get my bid, I was "Pi Phi or Die" from day one of rush. So we get ready to go outside with the rest of the girls who got bids to Pi Phi. We go out the main steps and the Pi Phis run up the steps to greet us. So everyone is being attacked and hugged, ect...except me. I'm kind of just standing there, not seeing ANYONE I know. Someone finally hands me a shirt and we all walk back to the house. We get in the house and then we're each given a balloon which we're supposed to stamp on to break it and get the piece of paper inside with our new Beta Buds (pseudo big sisters until we get our bigs) inside. This is of course incredibly awkward to try to do with 100+ girls you hardly know staring at you. Then I meet my Beta Buds, one of whom is a senior who gets her picture taken with us, then promptly bails, leaving me with my sophomore Beta Bud who is too busy chatting with her friends to even talk to me, and she keeps ditching me. So we finally leave the house and go to a local pizza joint called Pizza-n-Pipes because there is a huge pipe organ (and about 50 screaming kids) there. Again, I sit with my beta bud who ignores me the whole time. Then we get to go home for a little while, and then come back for formal pledging. We get back to our dorm and our RA (who is in another house, and has been a complete drag during all first semester - we have delayed rush) starts telling the 5 of us from her floor who pledged Pi Phi how she thinks our house is so cocky and how she hates Pi Phi. Welcome to Panhellenic sisterhood! I then have to call my very good friend who is a sophomore and an active in another house that I dropped before pref that I pledged Pi Phi, and she and her friend start freaking out on phone when I tell them that I pledged Pi Phi and they are totally disgusted (their sophomore class had a HUGE rivalry with our sophomores and they basically hated each other). Then we go back for formal pledging, after which some girl in our pledge class completely freaks out and starts bawling and talking about depledging. After that I go home with my roommate, who is also a Pi Phi pledge, and our Beta Buds have decorated our door. She has this huge arrow on her door with a really sweet message from her beta bud about how glad she is to have her in the house, as well as a goodie bag with tons of Pi Phi stuff and candy. I have piece of computer paper with pink felt tip marker writing that says "welcome to Pi Phi" and a Pi Phi pencil with a couple of pieces of candy attached to it. Needless to say, this was not the bid day I had hoped for!
The good part of the story is that when we all talked about it for rush the next year, it turns out that most of us hated bid day, and we completely revamped it. Now each pledge has someone who is assigned to go get her when we pick up the pledges, usually someone who knows her or preferenced her, and walks her back to the house. We attach the names of our beta buds to carnations that they pick out of a vase, and the beta buds switch every two weeks so if you get a dud, you have a chance to get someone better the next round. We also have a sisterhood that lasts all day and night, and we do formal pledging the next night so it is a lot less overwhelming.
I also was a GREAT beta bud for the next three years...I always gave great presents and left fun notes for my beta buds, took them out for lunch and called them regularly, so hopefully they had a better experience.
My fabulous Big Sis by far made up for my lame Beta Buds, and I had a great I-week thanks to her. So it all worked out in the end, but it is pretty funny to look back on now!
. Then most sororities had a mixer with a fraternity, but we had a party instead, for anyone close to us that we wanted to invite. I think this was much nicer than mixing - no matter what fraternity your boyfriend was in (if any), you could invite him to share that special night with you. 
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