They sat neatly on varnished wooden pews, 250 smartly dressed women wearing fashionable leather boots and holding elegantly curved wine glasses.
They had marched to St Hilda's on City Rise (a bastion of ladylike behaviour since 1896), through the quad, past the stylishly dressed door people and the champagne coolers, and into the perfumed elegance of the school chapel.
There was wine, a variety of fancy cheeses, those cheese knives with a two-pronged tips, bunches of delicious red grapes and Trelise Cooper-designed gift bags with ladies' things in them under every seat.
Expected activities included the launch of the Trelise Cooper spring and summer collection, something, apparently, to do with ladies' clothes.
There was also an exhibition of decorated bras, and an auction to raise money for Breast Cancer Cure.
All was muted tones, quiet conversation and pleasantly rounded vowels.
The stage lights reflected softly and reverently from the board listing the school's head prefects year by year.
The disconnected words left over from years of prize-givings, solemn prayers and assembly announcements echoed from the walls.
The arched blue stained-glass window behind the stage threw a gentle hue of goodliness into the hall, and the haloed saints portrayed within it stayed frozen in states of grace.
Everything was seemly.
Then the crowd hushed - and the music started to pump.
And the reason behind the total lack of husbands became clear. The night was to begin with the Bendon roadshow.
It involved dancing girls and boys, and it was raunchy as all get-out.
The girls swept into the chapel, high-heeling it on to the catwalk, a voluptuous sway of skimpy underwear, swinging hips, pointing fingers and saucy looks.
Red hair flicked flirtatiously off silken shoulders, lace stretched and struggled to contain bare flesh, and the beat took on a jungle throb.
''You sexy, girl, you sexy,'' the lyric called.
The girls stalked the runway, stomped their heels down at its end, and with a flick of their shoulders, turned and stalked back: they were queens of the jungle.
The 250 ladies clapped.
Behind the scenes, the models padded quickly back and forth from the dressing room for their minimalist costume changes.
Then the boys came on.
They came out in their underpants.
They were coy; then their faces bloomed to cheeky smiles.
Their arms were strong and they swaggered and swayed, they had stomach muscles - you could see them.
As if their blooming youth was not enough, they did backflips and walked on their hands to prove their abilities were a cut above that of the average fellow.
The 250 ladies whooped and cheered and laughed; they were engrossed in the exuberance as the feathers came out, flicking their garish colours over the audience.
The MC made a joke about the lingerie: ''As soon as you put them on you too will look like these models.''
The 250 ladies giggled.
The four men employed in support roles such as sound engineering and such tried not to look too embarrassed, or too interested, as the evening proceeded. They tried to look busy, and made sure they didn't stare.
They knew they were out of place, far out of their comfort zone and clearly outnumbered.
But they knew they had a ripping tale of underwear madness for all the husbands cut out of the action at the Bendon roadshow.
