How to Invite People for Cocktail Parties--Part I

Since these types of parties are only once or twice a quarter (more often if you are in the semester system), then you should spend extra effort to make them more special and unique. These are “brothers-only” or “one guest per brother” parties so these events are more personal. With that being said, you should use invitations as your main source of advertising. Ask your brothers for names and addresses of girls that they would like to invite for the cocktail party. Compile the list and make personalized invitations for each girl on the list. 

Your job will be a lot easier if you utilize Microsoft Excel and Word to make the invitations. There is a “Mail Merge” function in Microsoft Word that will insert and consecutively print the first names of an Excel spreadsheet. If you take the time to do it once, you can do it over and over again for your parties. This saves you time of manually inputting the girls first names. Look for inexpensive themed printer paper at Staples or Michael’s.

Personalized invitations work extremely well for insuring the success of your event. When a girl receives her invitation, she will feel special and privileged that she got a personal invite to your fraternity’s party. She will be impressed that you even addressed the invitation personally to her by putting her first name after “Dear.” She’ll most likely think that you took the time to type a personal invitation just for her. She doesn’t know about the genius of “Mail Merge.” Check out About.com's tutorial on how to use Mail Merge

Not everyone will be getting an invitation, and this boosts the self-esteem of a girl. Often girls will hang up your frat’s cocktail party invitations in their rooms as a trophy to show their friends. If you are worried about offending girls, then don’t be. The whole point is to offend the girls because it makes the party seem more special and exclusive. I know that seems like a messed up idea, but it actually works. More in the next post.

How to Promote Your Party

How is someone going to come to your party, if they don’t know about it? That’s where effective advertising comes in to making people come to your party. Your advertising and promoting tactics will change depending on the magnitude of your party. Any sort of promotion should be done in advance, which means at the very least, one day’s notice. 

The one constant way to always promote your party is the simplest. Personally going up to a girl and telling her about the party is the most effective way of making sure that girl will come to your party. In the girl’s mind, she feels special that you took time out of your busy “social chair day” to invite her to the party. She assumes that you might send out a Facebook event invite or other mass party invitation (which you didn’t do), and she is impressed that you invited her in a different way. Her self-esteem has been boosted by your personal invitation. She will thank you for making her feel special by coming to your party.

Since you can’t find every girl and tell them about the party in person, the next best thing is the phone call. You should call up girls to come to the party. Do not text them. Actually call them on the phone. Believe it or not, this takes a lot of skill and time to effectively do. Most people fail when doing this. Why? When a girl answers the phone, the guy immediately says something like, “Hello, _______. We are having a party tonight at my frat.” Then the conversation ends about 15 seconds later. You think a girl is going to feel special because you “called her?” Hell no! You just did the same thing as a mass text, which girls despise. She’ll be less likely to come to your party now.

The real way to effective utilize “the phone call” takes time and skill. Like sex, you can’t just stick it in. You have to spend some time “revving” her up. When you call one of your girls, the last thing you should say is something about the party. You need to talk about anything else, but the party. Ask her a question about something. See how her day was. Have a five minute conversation about something. After you feel that you are both comfortably chatting, then you should weave in a line about the party. 

Some good lines to use: “I haven’t seen you in a while. Let’s hang out tonight. We are having our ______ party at my frat house. You should come.” You can also use, “Any plans for tonight? Well, we are having our _____ party at my frat house. I would love to see you tonight.”

If you notice, the last line talks about you wanting to see her tonight. This is effective as it makes the girl feel special that you want to hang out with her. If you are really good at the “phone call” inviting, then the girl won’t even realize that the whole point of you calling her was to call her about the party. The “phone call” invitation is most effective the afternoon or couple days before the night of the party. There are many other ways to promote for your party as well.

Types of Parties and Social Events

1. Mixers/Events/Socials—weekly or biweekly events where a sorority comes over to your house for a themed party. Average cost: $300-400 (Usually the sorority will pay half). Number of people: 50-100 (this includes your frat brothers). Executing time: 1-3 days.
   
2. Cocktail Parties/Medium Sized Parties—once or twice per quarter (two or three per semester) where your frat hosts a party for the brothers and girls. If you want, each brother can invite one guest, but usually the party is just for brothers. These are classy parties, and you want to dress up nicely for it. Refer to the themes section for applicable ideas. Average cost: $300-500. Number of people: 200-300 (this includes your frat brothers). Executing time: 1-1 ½ weeks.
   
3. Large Registered Parties—annually or biannually parties that showcase your fraternity to the rest of the school. Start a tradition of a certain theme and repeat that theme every year. Do not copy other frats’ themes for their major parties. See my themes section for some unique theme ideas. Average cost: $2,000-3,000. Number of people: 500+ (this includes your frat brothers). Executing time: 4 weeks.
   
4. Date Parties—once per quarter (or twice per semester) where your frat will rent out a club or bar for the night, and every brother will bring a date. Usually it is a semi-formal theme, but you can even pick a theme for the party. Average cost: $1,000. Number of people: the number of brothers in your house and their dates. Executing time: 4 weeks.
   
5. Dinners—once per quarter or year where your frat hosts a sorority over for a nice dinner. This only works if you have a chef in your house, as ordering in food looks tacky. Average cost: $800-1,000. Number of people: 60-120 (this includes your frat brothers). Executing time: 2 weeks.

Rule 5 and 6: Spread Out Your Parties

Rule 5—Spread out the socials and balance them with brotherhood events. (Brotherhood events are fraternity gatherings to boost the comraderie of the fraternity via events, such as Poker Nights, Broomball, Camping Trips, etc). If there are too many socials within a quarter, then you will burn out the guys in your house. Guys should look forward to socials during the week, so make them uniquely themed and spread out. NOTE: I will not talk about brotherhood events because these are not parties.

Rule 6—The end of your quarter should have exciting events. Try to mimic your first two weeks of the quarter with the week before finals. During this week before finals, there won’t be any tests or quizzes. At most this will be the week of papers, and most people can balance partying with writing papers.

Rule 3 and 4: When to Plan Parties for Holidays or Special Events

Rule 3—Do not plan events during or before three-day weekends or other holidays, such as Thanksgiving, Martin Luther King Day, etc. People tend to leave town for a three-day weekend, so having a party or event during this time would only yield a terrible turnout of guys and girls.

Rule 4—Plan your date parties only on Sunday nights. Usually bars and clubs will make deals with you because Sunday nights are their slow nights. Also, there will be no obligation for brothers’ dates to go to another party because no one has parties on Sunday nights.

Rule 1 and 2: When to Have and Not Have Parties

Rule 1—Have events with the hottest sororities during the first two weeks of the quarter. You should probably have events on Tuesday and Wednesday for the first two weeks. The reasoning for this is that there are no tests, homework, or papers due during the first two to three weeks of a quarter. People have just come back from their vacations, and they want to party.

Rule 2—Never have a social during the weeks of midterms. Those are weeks four through six out of a 10-week quarter. Girls and guys will be less likely to party during weeks when they have to study for midterms. Instead, have an event on a Friday because most people will make Friday night their “party night,” and they will choose to study on Saturday and Sunday nights. Another option is to have a nice dinner with a sorority during the week because it gives people a chance to relax, socialize, and eat during a week of stressful midterms.

Lingo 101: Social Calendar

A Social Calendar is an internal memo that alerts a frat or sorority’s members about their upcoming events in the quarter. The easiest way to make one is in Microsoft Word using a table. Remember not to show other people your social calendar, especially other frats. However, if you look at a sorority’s social calendar, then you can find out when other frat’s parties are. This information will allow you to plan around those events.

Your Social Calendar should have a variety of events. You should have weekly events with sororities, an occasional dinner with a sorority (if you have a chef), one or two date parties, and a few larger parties. The Social Calendar will change every term, so you will have three calendars on the quarter system and two calendars on the semester system.

Your Social Calendar will depend greatly on the type of school you go to. If you go to a school that has a popular football or basketball team, then you want to be careful when planning events on gamedays (Thursdays and Saturdays). Since I do not go to your school, you willl have to be the judge on which nights students go out and party. For some schools, everyone goes out on Thursday and Friday nights, but not on Saturdays. For other schools, Wednesday could be the biggest party night of the week. It all depends so adjust your calendars accordingly.

Social Committee Breakdown

Here's a breakdown of the positions and their responsibilities in the Social Committee:

1. Decoration Chair—brother in charge of purchasing all necessary decorations for the party. Decorations will always change to compliment the theme of the party. Sometimes there is no need for this position, as the social chair might prefer to purchase decorations. (There will be MANY posts about different decorations and themes.)
   
2. Beverage Chair—brother in charge of purchasing all beverages and cups for the party. The social chair should try to go with the Beverage Chair as much as possible, in order to estimate how many and types of beverages, etc to buy for the event.
   
3. Set-up Chair—brother, usually a newer brother, in charge of setting up all of the decorations for the party. This includes moving necessary furniture and placing the beverages in the main area of the party.
   
4. Clean-up Chair—brother, usually a newer brother, in charge of taking down all decorations from the party, and he is in charge of throwing away all trash from the event. Also, this brother should return all furniture back to their original positions after the party.
   
5. Security Chair—brother in charge of selecting sober brothers for the party. If wristbands are used for the party, then this brother will be in charge of distributing them. He is also in charge of checking guests in at the door. If your frat uses a guest list, then the Security Chair will be the one in charge of compiling that list.
   
6. DJ Chair—brother in charge of the music for the party. If your frat has professional DJ equipment, then he is in charge of setting up the equipment and putting it away after the party.
   

This is just a glimpse at the positions. I will go into more detail for each position later on in the blog.

Lingo 101: Social Committee

One of the simplest and easiest ways to make your job less stressful is to get others involved. A Social Committee is the group that you, the Social Chair, oversee. Create a social committee that consists of the following positions: Decoration Chair, Beverage Chair, Set-up Chair, Clean-up Chair, Security Chair, and DJ Chair. You should pick one reliable and responsible person to chair each position. Depending on how many brothers you have in your chapter, you can have brothers work under your sub-chairs. For the smaller frats, you might have to take the responsibilities of two or three positions.

You should meet with your committee at least once a week to discuss any problems or suggestions. You, as social chair, are also responsible for your committee members doing their jobs. If any member cannot do his duty, then you must either do the duty yourself, or find yourself a new social committee member. These positions will come up again in the blog when I explain the components of the party in detail.

Organization: Make your life much easier

Inefficient organization can lead to bad parties. I’m not saying that you have to color code lists, have file folders, and anything else that resembles an obsessive compulsive disorder. What I am saying is that you need to have a Social Committee to help execute your party. Your Social Committee will make you less stressed and get the rest of your fraternity brothers involved.

Besides a Social Committee, there will be other ways for you to organize your time and your frat's time. Calendars and e-mail communication are two more ways to keep your social events organized. When things aren't organized properly, you are more likely to forget something important that will be vital to the success of the party.