•You MUST wear your Hat and Colors (Full Regalia) to any official Red Hat event (including our monthly get-together). The Kazoo, our official instrument, is considered part of the Full Regalia.

• Since we consider ourselves to be royal, you should choose a Royal Title that reflects your personality.

•While we love our darling husbands and children/grandchildren, we do NOT bring them with us to any Red Hat event. This is our time- NOT theirs!

•Dues are payable twice per year in January and July- $12 each time. If you cannot attend, you will NOT receive any "credit back" for meetings missed during the year. The only exception to this is if you are very ill (long-term illness). If this is the case, please let Queen Mother know about this.

•We will not use our Red Hat contacts to solicit anything. Sharing our email and home addresses is for fun only.

•You may occasionally bring a Guest to our meetings or events but you must clear this with the Queen first. Your Guest must wear a Red Hat (you can lend her one) and may only come to two events in a year. The exception to this is that Visiting Queens and Vice-Queens may come at any time.

•When visiting other Red Hat chapters, we must abide by their Chapter Guidelines.

•You should send all complaints to the Countess of Complaints, not the Queen. You MUST keep the Queen happy at all times!

•It is absolutely required that you have fun!!!

"The Warning"-excerpted from the poem by Jenny Joseph

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple With a red hat which doesn't go and doesn't suit me. And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter. I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells And run my stick along the public railings And make up for the sobriety of my youth. I shall go out in my slippers in the rain And pick the flowers in other people's gardens . . . to see more of the poem, go to: http://www.redhatsociety.com/poem.html

Exalted Queen Mother, Sue Ellen Cooper, gifted her best friend Linda with a copy of this poem and a red hat and so The Red Hat Society was born.....

Before The Red Hat Society....

and after joining The Red Hat Society!!!