Women from all over campus joined together Friday night at the Campus Christian Center to celebrate Galentine’s Day, the female friend version of Valentine’s Day.

Marshall students Courtney Powers and Alyssa Chapman held the event with the help of the Baptist Campus Ministries.

Powers, a junior secondary math education major, said the event, which had 102 women in attendance, started at 6 p.m. and consisted of a dinner, speakers, dancing and “mocktails,” non-alcoholic drinks that imitate cocktails.

“So what happens is, for the first half hour, we have a mocktail hour —so we have chocolate covered strawberries and a photo booth— so girls can talk until everyone arrives, and then at 6:30 [p.m.] we will be serving them dinner,” Powers said.“The boys at BCM have volunteered to serve, so each boy will be assigned a table and will cater on the girls hand and foot, and then, after that, we have a speaker.”

This year, two speakers attended the event and discussed the event’s theme, Powers said.

“This year we have two speakers, a student speaker and a guest speaker, and they will talk about the theme,” Powers said. “This year is ‘rejoice in the presence and suffering.’”

The theme, Powers said, came from Chapman and herself deciding on what they wanted their peers to hear.

“How we decided the theme was really focusing on what we wanted our peers to hear, spiritually based, so that is how we decided that,” Powers said. “The event forms around that main idea.”

Powers said she hopes the speakers resonate with the girls in attendance.

“I hope they [attendees] find some scriptural truth that will resonate with them, and also, our speakers are usually older, so by having someone older come in to share their life experience, they can learn something through that and find a mentor or someone that they can look up to who has gone through similar things they have,” Powers said.

Each woman received a token at the end of the evening to remind them of the theme, Powers said.

“We have a token give away, so this year we have little joy jars and papers that they can put things that bring them joy in the jar and then remember them when times are tough and then a handout that they can put on their wall that says truth about them that is found in scripture,” Powers said.

Powers said Chapman and herself had been planning the event since August 2018.

“We started brainstorming our theme and our speaker and so once those two things are done, everything else kind of falls into place,” Powers said. “We worked this semester, and a lot over Christmas break, to get ready for this.”

Kayla Scott, a senior marketing major, said this is the third year for the event with BCM and that her favorite part is being able to spend the evening with her friends.

“I love being able to get dressed up and being able to fellowship with one another, eat good food and listen to a good speaker and just spend an evening with your friends,” Scott said.

Meredith O’Bara can be contacted at [email protected].