Alpha Phi's Red Dress Gala

Every fall the sisters of Alpha Phi host a weekend filled with football, family, and philanthropy. This year, our Parents Weekend and Red Dress Gala were held the weekend of September 16^th. Red Dress Gala is more than your typical Greek philanthropy. It is an elegant banquet, dinner, and silent auction for Alpha Phi’s sisters and their families. Although this evening is meant to be an enjoyable time with our families, the ultimate purpose of Red Dress Gala is to raise funds for the Alpha Phi Foundation. The Alpha Phi Foundation is broken into two parts: the Forget-Me-Not fund and research for Cardiac Care initiatives. This is where all of the money we raise from both Red Dress Gala and our spring semester philanthropy, Keep the Beat Week, goes.

In order to better understand what an evening at Alpha Phi’s Red Dress Gala is like let me paint the picture for you. The event was held in the large banquet room at Custom Catering. As the sisters and their families arrived, they were instructed to take a picture with their family with our letters in their red dresses. Then each family proceeded to their assigned tables to mingle and enjoy appetizers with the other Alpha Phi families. Auction items and baskets were on display around the room for everyone to take a look at and bid on throughout the night. These items ranged from jewelry pieces to a weekend at the Mountainside Villas of Massanutten Resort. 

The dinner buffet opened up about an hour or so into the evening and each table was dismissed one at a time to go get their meals. After dinner, we watched a wonderful video with pictures at Alpha Phi events throughout the year, pictures of sisters with their families, and pictures of loved ones lost due to the #1 killer, heart disease. Toward the end of the night, our Director of Philanthropy, Alli Sharper, and President, Alexandra Hoffman, made short speeches thanking everyone for attending and recognizing how important our cause was. The auction then closed and each item was announced for how much it sold for and to which family. Our grand total raised for the Alpha Phi Foundation was over $15,000 this year! This is a record-breaking amount of money that the Eta Omicron Chapter has raised, and we are so excited to present these funds to the Alpha Phi Foundation.