Staying Fit
What’s the best advice for rookie reunion planners? Start now.
“Not starting early enough — that’s usually the mistake of someone who’s planning for the first time or a first-time reunion,” says Edith Wagner, the founder and editor of Reunions Magazine, which offers resources for family, military and school reunions. “They think it’ll take six months, and it takes a minimum of a year. And a really large reunion probably should take two years.”
Of course, the size of your reunion and the location will affect how you plan. A potluck picnic for 30 will require less time to organize than a destination reunion for 300. That said, there are some common threads, such as allowing time to track down far-flung relatives, set up a payment system, order souvenir T-shirts and, perhaps most important, delegate responsibilities.
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“There are the reunions where one person is in charge. That’s a real big mistake, but the world is full of martyrs,” Wagner says. “Having other people involved, having other people taking responsibility, makes it a family reunion. It has to be a family project.”
But family projects can get complicated: Imagine a reunion as a wedding planned by a committee. It’s good to rely on a framework and advice from experts, other families and venues that handle scores of reunions every year. Check out suggestions, resources and workshops offered by a variety of sources, including AARP, Reunions Magazine, Familyreunion.com and the Family Reunion Institute; Etsy and Pinterest; house and campground rental destinations (such as Utah Family Lodges); and the convention and visitors bureaus of popular reunion cities and towns. For example, the Alpharetta Convention & Visitors Bureau, in the Atlanta metro area, offers free in-person workshops and will send you a downloadable reunion planning guide.
One more vital piece of advice from Wagner: “At a planning meeting, you never go to the bathroom because when you go, someone has volunteered you for the job you don’t want to do.”
To get started, here’s a timeline created from those expert sources that can be adjusted to the size and scope of your reunion.