I recently attended my first formal hosted by my house. After the experience, my only regret is that, as a junior, I haven’t been to more. The whole trip was awesome, and I learned a lot from it. I think it’d be wrong of me not to share these five things in order to potential help save you from a disastrous formal in the future.
1. MAKE IT TO THE MAIN ATTRACTION
I cannot stress this one enough. I saw the look of shear devastation on the faces of those in the lobby the next morning after not having made it onto the boat. Nothing is better than the night’s main attraction. Generally speaking, it’s very easy to bring your own great fun to these events, so turn down during the pregame in order make it to game time. If you wake up and realize you’ve missed out on the main attraction, the only person your date will be more upset with than herself/himself is you. That’s an evil you do not want to deal with.
2. Roommate selection is surprisingly important.
Nothing will start your formal experience off worse than roommate issues during the day. Try to plan it so that not only are you comfortable with not only the brother/sister in the room but also their date. People will flock to a room where a good time is being had, and if you do the host friends correctly and pick the right roommates, your room is bound to be the life of the party. If you happen to get stuck in a situation that is less than ideal, however, try to avoid your room for as much of the night as possible. When you come back at the end of the night the only thing you’ll want to do is sleep anyway.
3. Save Up
Formals are generally held in larger cities. This is exciting but expensive too. The costs of the hotel and attraction are usually predetermined, but there are a lot of unexpected costs that sneak up on you. Be as frugal as possible leading up to formal to avoid running into sticky situations during the big day. No one knows food tastes better when it’s free than your date.
4. Don’t Take a High Maintenance Date
The title “formal” is a little deceiving. While it’s nice to pretend you’re all fancy for a night, it’s really just a glorified party. For the most part, we’re still all just college kids living on tight budgets. That said, the hotels, dinners and attractions are likely to be planned with cost as a limiting factor. If your date is expecting to be primped and pampered, they may be in for a surprise. Finding a date who is able to go with the flow and go into formal with low expectations is a recipe for success. If the hotel, dinner, and/or attraction are better than expected, then it’s just a cherry on top. If formal ends up being a low budget production, they won’t be too disappointed.
5. There Can Never Be Too Many Pictures
Pictures can seem very tedious, especially when all you want to do is dance with your date. I can promise you, however, that you’ll be upset with yourself if you don’t take the time to capture some of the finer moments of the night, especially if you’re in a relationship. Formals are great opportunities to snap a new profile pic or Transformation Tuesday gem. Furthermore, when you look back on your college years when you move onto the scary thing that is the real world, you’ll appreciate the extra twenty minutes it took to snap all of the photos. For all you know, a formal picture with your date could one day end up in your wedding slideshow.
