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three women standing between sunflowers
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How to Have a Successful Formal Weekend in 10 Steps

Her Campus Placeholder Avatar Jackie Kinney
Her Campus Placeholder Avatar Danielle Jackson
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at UGA chapter.

1. Buy a cooler. Decorate it with all the things your date love. But wait, do you even know what your date loves, other than a whiskey coke or a Budweiser downtown? Text your date and his friends and find out some of his favorite things. Or go the easy route and paint anything that has to do with Athens, anywhere from Little Italy’s to Howard the cab driver.

2. Before you start to paint, spray paint the cooler white. But only if you’re inside the dorms! Everyone loves a 12:00 a.m. fire alarm from the girl intelligent enough to use excessive fumes indoors. 

3. Throw your date’s fraternity letters and your own sorority letters on the cooler while you’re openly painting it in the Brumby study rooms, just to make sure the people that walk by will know exactly what formal you were invited on.

4. After spending an entire month’s worth of food money on alcohol for the first (and probably not the last) time in your life, fill the cooler you spent an absurd amount of time on. 

5. Embark on a three day extravaganza of fun, vodka sprites, and small talk!  If you travel by bus, crack open the champagne as you’re pulling out of the parking lot.

6. Disrupt every other guest unfortunate enough to book the same hotel on the same weekend as a fraternity. Don’t feel the need to apologize for the incredibly loud noise complaints and entitled frat stars walking around as if they owned the hotel. If only they were Chuck Bass.

7. Get denied at four different bars in Charleston or New Orleans or Savannah. Argue with the bouncer because you are appalled he doesn’t believe you’re actually 25 based on the paper covering up your UGA ID. Start to re-evaluate any place other than Athens. 

8. Attempt to get into restaurants with a “Table for 40”, and see the look of horror on the hostess’s face. Reservations are optional for such a large group, right?

9. After the weekend, on the way home, realize that you have become way too comfortable with the people you barely knew on the way there.

10. Sleep the entire Monday of MLK weekend away to recuperate. Never take a sip of alcohol again. Or until your next Tuesday downtown.

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Danielle is a senior at the University of Georgia majoring in English and minoring in Sociology. You can usually find her dividing her time between being Campus Correspondent of Her Campus UGA, binge-watching Grey's Anatomy on Netflix and daydreaming about being one of Beyonce's backup dancers. If you want to know more about Danielle, you can follow her on Instagram (@danielleknecole_) or Twitter (@DanielleKnecole).