Starting a Reunion

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Sherry Hightower on July 9, 2009 at 8:51pm

Steps to a Successful Family Reunion

Permalink Reply by Sherry Hightower on July 11, 2009 at 12:44am

Brian

Did you look over the link I posted..did it give you any ideas?

Sherry

Permalink Reply by Anita Payne on July 11, 2009 at 12:53am

Reunions are such fun. We had one a couple of years ago. Now thinking it must be time for another one. By the way we are in Australia.
One thing we did was to get Cleanskin bottles of wine, Red & White and made our own labels with one of the old family photos and the date and place of the event. It went very well we had people wanting to buy them from us. That wasn't our the plan but will be for the next one.

Has anyone got any other unique ideas?

Permalink Reply by Tara Pfarner on July 13, 2009 at 5:56am

My mom and I started our reunion from scratch, and we're going on the fourth year this weekend.
First you need to decide who is included in the reunion - ours is just descendants of my mother's parents, because there are alot of us. When we started, my first step was to write letters to my mom's siblings explaining that a reunion was in the works, asking for family information for the family history, addresses for each of their children and grandchildren, and suggestions and feedback. Luckily, what I recieved was positive in nature. This all started about 8 months prior to the reunion.
We then allowed some time for the dust to settle, compiled a list of the addresses we had, and set out to find the ones we didn't. Thankfully, there were only a couple, so I started with the local phone book, then started googling. You'll find that if you google someone's name plus the word address, you'll come up with some hits. Some of them will be for paid "people-finder" sites but most will give you a name, age, and city for free, which might be enough to tell you whether you've got your person or not. Then google the city plus the words local phone book or directory and you should be able to find something. If you run into dead ends, just keep trying - google the person's name and city if you know it, and go far into the search results - you might come across an email address from a post they've made somewhere. You could also try facebook, myspace, and other social networking sites.
Send out invitations early your first year. People might not be expecting it, so give them time to accomodate the date. Don't be afraid to ask for help either - information for your family history, help with setup and cleanup, supplies, donations, volunteers. Maybe even send out a newsletter 2-3 months prior to your reunion.
That, in my opinion, is the hardest part - tracking people down and getting that list organized and current. Other than that, you need to choose a location, whether it's a one day or a multiple day event, what activities you will have, if you will have door prizes/favors/"souvenirs" to sell/etc. That's all a matter of convenience and preference.
Hope this helps! Message me if I can help you out more.