The Spring Formal
Black tie. A six-piece band. Four hours in Ballroom A. One admission requirement, and that requirement is load-bearing.
No brother, pledge, alumnus, or guest is admitted unaccompanied. Door staff hold a printed manifest cross-referenced by Plus-One Compliance. Solo arrivals are escorted to the parking lot, where the Parliamentarian reads Article VII aloud, in full, at a measured and unhurried pace.
- —Days
- —Hours
- —Minutes
- —Seconds
- Date
- Saturday, April 10, 2027
- Time
- 9:00 PM – midnightDoors 8:45. The band stops at 11:58 regardless.
- Venue
- FSU Student Life CenterBallroom A · 942 Learning Way
- Attire
- Black tie“Optional” means required.
- Admission
- $45 per couplePer couple. Not per person. The math is the point.
- Manifest closes
- April 3, 11:59 PMIt does not reopen.
Article VII, in full
Bylaws of Chi Beta Omega, Article VII, §3(a), adopted spring 2020No brother, pledge, alumnus, or guest shall be admitted to the Spring Formal unaccompanied. The Chapter has tried it the other way. The Chapter will not be trying it again.
The clause was drafted in the eleven days following the 2019 formal and ratified 189–3. All three dissenting votes were cast by the same brother, who was permitted to vote three times because the Parliamentarian was, at that moment, on the phone with the venue.
Since ratification, attendance has risen 41%, the band has stayed the full set every year, and the photographer has returned a usable album on each occasion. The Executive Committee considers the matter settled and considers your objection noted.
Plus-one eligibility check
Run your intended guest through the screen before you submit them to the manifest. Results are advisory, instantaneous, and final.
No submission on file.
Select an option and Plus-One Compliance will return a determination. Tucker reviews every real submission personally, so consider this a dress rehearsal for a conversation you are going to have anyway.
The plus-one procurement pipeline
Published every January by the Social Chair. Followed closely by the brothers who attend, and ignored entirely by the brothers who spend April 9th making phone calls.
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T-minus 45 days
Market research
Establish the total addressable market. It is smaller than you believe, it overlaps heavily with the markets of your closest friends, and Brandt has already run outreach against most of it.
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T-minus 30 days
First contact
In person, or by text. Not by LinkedIn message. A brother attempted the LinkedIn channel in 2023 and the entire chapter had to read it aloud at the next meeting, as a teaching case.
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T-minus 21 days
Due diligence
Confirm they understand three things: it is black tie, it is four hours, and your friends will all be there. Surprises at the door become a Risk Committee matter, and the Risk Committee meets on Sundays.
-
T-minus 14 days
Term sheet
Ticket purchased, name submitted to Plus-One Compliance, corsage ordered from the bulk sheet. Corsages are ordered. Corsages are never improvised.
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T-minus 7 days
Reconfirmation
Re-confirm in writing. People forget. People also receive better offers. Both of these happen every year, and only one of them is survivable at this stage.
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T-minus 3 days
Contingency gate
If you are still unaccompanied, notify the Social Chair. He keeps a list. Do not ask what is on the list. Do ask early — the list is a finite resource and it is drawn down fast.
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Day of
Close
Arrive together. What happens after 9:00 PM is between you and your evening. The arrival is the deliverable.
Dress code
Enforced at the door, cheerfully, by people who have been looking forward to enforcing it.
| Category | Expected | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Jacket | Black tuxedo jacket, single-breasted, shawl or peak lapel | “Midnight blue” is a conversation this chapter has had once and will not be having again. |
| Neckwear | Black bow tie, hand-tied strongly preferred | Clip-ons are permitted. Clip-ons are also noticed, catalogued, and remembered at Thanksgiving. |
| Footwear | Polished black dress shoes | The Parliamentarian owns a flashlight and considers the front steps a checkpoint. |
| Guests | Formal attire — entirely the guest's choice | No dress code is enforced against guests. They are doing us a favor and every brother here knows it. |
| Not permitted | Athletic wear, costumes, sunglasses indoors, the fog machine | The fog machine is not ours, has never been ours, and is currently, per the Alumni Relations Committee, somewhere in Asia. |
Where your $45 goes
Presented to the chapter in February and read aloud, line by line, by the adviser. It takes nine minutes. Nobody has ever left the room.
| Line item | Budget | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Venue & event staffing | $3,200 | Student Life Center, Ballroom A, four hours plus setup. |
| Catering, passed hors d'oeuvres | $2,850 | Sixty percent of this line is the mac-and-cheese bites. We have reviewed the allocation. The allocation is correct. |
| Live band — The Garnet Standard | $1,400 | Six pieces. One of them is a saxophone. The saxophone is not always necessary and the saxophone does not know that. |
| Photography | $700 | Two shooters. Both were briefed on 2019. |
| Florals & corsages | $620 | Ordered in bulk per Article VII, which is the only reason this number is not tragic. |
| Event insurance | $480 | Up 31% year over year. Ask us why in person. |
| Contingency fund | $0 | See Asset Recovery on the home page. |
| Total | $9,250 | Funded by ticket sales, chapter dues, and two alumni who ask only that we never call them about it. |
Rules for the night
Eight of them. All eight have a story behind them and you will hear most of the stories at some point.
- Arrive with your plus-one. Not near them. Not behind them. With them.
- The guest manifest closes at 11:59 PM on April 3. Compliance does not reopen it. Compliance has never reopened it, including the year it was the Compliance Chair's own date.
- One drink ticket per attendee of legal drinking age, ID checked at the door, no exceptions and no “my birthday is in June.” Underage brothers who test this are driven home by the Executive VP personally, and it is a long, quiet drive.
- Ballroom A is fire-coded to 240 people. We are booked to 238. Please do not do that math and then do something about that math.
- The dance floor opens at 9:30. Before 9:30 it is a networking reception and you will conduct yourself accordingly, including handshakes.
- Be excellent to the hotel staff, the band, and the photographers. They are professionals. We are undergraduates in rented jackets pretending to be professionals. Know the difference.
- What happens on the dance floor does not enter the minutes. The Secretary has been instructed on this point repeatedly and now simply sets his pen down at 9:30.
- The ballroom is returned at 12:30 AM in the condition we received it. We managed this last year for the first time. It remains our proudest institutional achievement, and yes, it is in the Annual Business Report.
Formal questions, answered
Do I actually need a date?
Yes.
Seriously though.
Yes. It is in the bylaws, it has survived two amendment votes, and it has a standing compliance chair with a budget line. At a certain point a bit becomes governance, and we crossed that point in 2021.
Why does this rule exist?
In 2019 we ran the formal without it. Ninety-one people attended. Eighty-four were brothers. The Historian's minutes describe the ballroom that night, verbatim, as “a room of men, standing.” The band left forty minutes early and did not invoice us, which was somehow the worst part. We do not discuss 2019.
Can two brothers attend as each other's plus-one?
No. That is attending together, which is the precise failure mode Article VII exists to prevent. This question is submitted every year by the same person and is denied every year in the same words.
My date cancelled the day before.
This is the single most common failure in the pipeline, which is exactly why the pipeline has a T-minus 3 contingency gate. Text the Social Chair. He is quick, he is discreet, and he has never once made it weird.
Can I bring someone who does not attend FSU?
Yes, and we encourage it. Outside perspective measurably improves the room, and our alumni report that the best formals are the ones where half the ballroom has never heard of Robert's Rules of Order.
What if I genuinely cannot find a date?
Then tell us in February and we will sort it out, the way we sort it out every single year. Nobody has ever been left out of this formal and nobody ever will be. The rule is about putting in the effort; it was never about the people who ask for help.
What does the $45 cover?
Two admissions, passed hors d'oeuvres, one corsage, the band, the photographers, and a share of an insurance premium we would rather not itemize further. See the budget above, which the adviser reads aloud, line by line, every February.
Reserve your ticket
$45 per couple. Submit both names to Plus-One Compliance by 11:59 PM on April 3. Late submissions are read, appreciated, and declined.
Accessibility, dietary needs, and anything else that would make the night work better for you or your guest: email the adviser at whitfield-brooks@fsu.edu. That request goes to the top of the list, every time, no questions asked and no Article VII involved.