The informal countdown to formal begins when you start secretly stalking the boy of your dreams to confirm that he will, in fact, be the Prince Charming to accompany you to an even that will end up being way more of a shitshow than the fairytale you imagined. The official countdown begins the day of this almost-elegant blackout fest. Once your date is secured, true panic sets in. Like clockwork, you think you have more time than you actually do to get ready, and suddenly you’re an hour out and forced to borrow your roommate’s bra because your strapless is nowhere in sight. Here’s how the day usually breaks down.
12:00PM- Send a group text demanding a dining hall lunch to discuss your dress, drinks, and date.
1:00PM- Pick at your plate because you’re preoccupied. You will regret this later.
2:00PM- Lay out one last time and realize that if you were any tanner you’d sooner be mistaken for Pocahontas than Cinderella.
3:00PM- Take a quick detox nap because you’re hungover, nervous, and nauseous.
4:00PM- Casually text your date the pregame plans you’ve spent the day obsessing over.
5:00PM- Start to think about getting ready.
6:00PM- Actually start getting ready. Regret not having started at least two hours prior to this moment.
6:30PM- Call for someone to help straighten your hair. Five sisters appear with flat iron in hand. Curl it once it’s pin straight, because it’s a girl’s prerogative to change her mind.
6:45PM- Call upon the friend most skilled at applying makeup to give you a smoky eye. You think it will be sexy, but it ends up making you look like a cross between a <em>Fight Club</em> reject and a ’90s Glamour Shot model.
7:00PM- Debate whether to strangle yourself with spanx. They will inhibit your liquor intake and it could get weird if you get lucky, but your mother always told you that beauty is pain, and the pain is worth the slideshow pictures.
8:00PM- Head to the pregame an hour late, because being on time for a pregame is basically impossible.
8:15PM- Consume all the shots in the world while your date goes into the fridge to fill his flask. The hostess is displeased, so he offers to pour her a drink (made with her own liquor, of course).
8:30PM- Take enough pictures to rival the parental paparazzi of your senior prom.
9:00PM- First on the bus means first at the bar.
9:05PM- Your date pulls out a mysterious bottle of booze. You’re ready.
9:15PM- Immediately hit the bar, even though in the last hour you’ve done enough damage to your liver to last a lifetime. You’re one shot away from leaving one of your ridiculously expensive heels behind.
9:45PM- The standards chair tells you that you might want to consider “taking it down a notch,” which is weird, because you think your energy level is perfect.
10:00PM- The president seems unimpressed with the booty popping skills you’ve spent years perfecting. She requests that you stop dancing on elevated surfaces.
11:00PM- Your DFMO is veering out of control. Your big throws up over the balcony, where her date throws plates. Your little tumbles off the table she’s dancing on. Your grandlittle looks uncomfortably close to a nip slip.
12 :00AM-12:00PM- Unclear…
Congratulations! You survived formal, and it confirmed that all your best-laid plans seem perfect at the time (just not so much in the morning). You meet up with your sisters for a Powerade breakfast, hoping it will make you feel vaguely human. You figure your hungover hell isn’t too much to bear, since this was your last hurrah before summer. As you look at pictures and provide your best scathing Joan Rivers commentary, you wait for that inevitable call from standards to confirm that last night was just as fabulously sloppy as you imagined.
Nice Move270
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Fleur de Lilly
Fleur de Lilly (@margaretabrams) is a contributing writer for Total Sorority Move and Post Grad Problems. When she's not corrupting her big's baby, she can be found decoding texts, gravitating towards raised surfaces, and spending time with her gentleman caller, Jack Daniels. She loves Lilly, Louisiana, and her lineage.
@margaretabrams
@margaretabrams
