Formal season - or the slow mental decline of sorority girls everywhere

It's fraternity and sorority formal season, the time of year that dates become scarce as the formal date looms menacingly. I haven't even really started worrying, no dress is picked out, no dates queued up, no nothing. It's the type of thing that people put more time into than their weddings; someone almost always ends up mortifiyingly drunk and at least one person ends up in tears.

We have our formal at the beginning of April so as to not conflict with the other girls' formals, but that doesn't even begin to assuage the stress. There are menus to consider, to have a dance or to not have a dance, open bar vs. cash bar vs. no bar at all, decorations, awards, the list is endless.

I think the biggest stress for the single gals like myself is finding a date. This seems like a fairly straightforward part but no, there are so many things to be considered. First and foremost is whether to bring a frat guy or a GDI (God-damned independent). Bringing a GDI is fine, but if everyone elses dates are in frat it can make it awkward for them, but they also probably won't expect you to put out. According to a certain male chauvinist friend of ours, Props, the guys in their frat usually only bring girls, or agree to be a girl's date, they believe will put out.

After finding a date, the biggest stressor is, of course, the dress! You want a dress that makes you look sexy, without being slutty and will also fit in with all the other girls' dresses. You don't want to be too informal for fear that you're the least dressed up there. If you're someone's formal date you need to look even better.

Then comes the menu - there is always someone that doesn't like something on the menu. This may cause tears, fights or both. As for the bar there are always going to be a few people who just want to get really trashed at formal and a couple who don't want to drink at all; I'm in the latter camp.

Latte and Cowgirl are always trying to set people up and 'find formal dates' for everyone and their dog. They both have some sort of sick fascination with formals (more so Cowgirl). They can usually be found polling the girls to see who wants to go to which formal and then chatting amongst themselves to figure out who's date they could be. Last year Bacon's date ignored her the whole time. Pancake actually had a guy ask her if he could be her date to our formal, she declined (rather foolishly according to Waffle, Latte and I).

Props says that he would love to have all of our girls at his formal, and the surefire way to do so is to'pretend you're going to sleep with them to get invited'. And then what, hope that your reputation as a tease doesn't catch up with you?

Ugh, I'm so sick of formal alread and I've still got 2 months to go. I do still however need a date, so if you're interested, let me know. You will, of course, have to put out to get invited to our formal. It's only fair...