Welcome back! Today’s post is going to be all about planning a formal event when you’re in college, whether it be for a sorority or fraternity or campus club! Over the course of this semester, I have been a part of planning my sorority’s spring Formal, and I’m going to share the steps we went through to make it the best it could be!
The first thing my committee and I needed to decide was the location. In the past, my sorority has had our Formal at churches (we’re a Christian sorority), at banquet halls, many different places! Since our budget this year was very small, we wanted to keep it on campus since booking a banquet room in a James Madison building (for a student) is free. After deciding this, we could go forward with planning the theme!
We discussed a lot of different themes but eventually decided on a carnival theme! Usually Formal is more, ya know, formal, but we wanted to make it more interactive this time around. We didn’t have a lot of money given to our committee to throw the event, so we got most of our decorations from Hobby Lobby, Michaels, and Dollar General! Fortunately for us, most of the places we went had actual sections set aside for carnival parties!!
We decided the main things we wanted to have were games and a space designated for pictures. For games, we bought supplies for a can toss, corn hole, and a balloon pop – all typical things you would see at a carnival! None of these were difficult to put together and they ended up being so, so fun. For the balloon pop, we filled each balloon with confetti so, when it was popped, confetti burst out! As far as the photo space, we bought two big rolls of red and blue carnival tickets and hung strips of 40 tickets to make a backdrop. After that, we hung a multi-colored banner on top to add some more color! We included props, such as clown noses and a boa, on the side so everyone could get some silly pictures too!
Our photo backdrop with some of our props we made!
Of course, we had more things like balloons and a popcorn stand and jolly rancher center pieces (for the tables) but those were the main decorations that made up our party! Even though it was stressful envisioning everything, we had a blast putting this together. I hope this post helped with your future party planning and I’ll talk to you next week!
