Many people used to raise in a neighborhood where their family and friends lived their entire lives and the new generations raised regularly. Today everything has changed. Modern families are widely dispersed which has led to growing popularity of family reunions. Family members still want to stay in touch with their cousins, aunts, uncles and siblings on the family tree if just to see how the newest saplings are progressing.  If you are in charge of your family annual reunion look through these steps which can help you plan the family gathering:
1. Complete the guest list and determine whether this will be a reunion of simply one set of granparents, their children and grandchildren or you are planning to invite every individual and their families sharing an ancestry dating back several generations. As you consider the amount of guests think of the idea of hosting a family reunion.
2. If you are planning to have a large reunion, ask some volunteers to assist you. One person can solve the problem with accomodations and travel plans, while another can make up activities for the event, another volunteer can take care of the food. 3. It is also important to settle on a date and place. Most family reunions are held during the summer so that the kids haven't missed their school. However there are also long school-holiday weekends throughout the year that can open up your family's options for location and the costs of the party. You need to poll potential participants to guage their interest in both attending a reunion as well as the date and location of the party. This can be done informally by phone or via email. Try to avoid open-ended questions, give several specific choices so that you could build a consensus. 4. Consider the budget for your party. First of all, determine the level of expenditures: whether it is going to be a low cost party or a great large expense gathering. You will spend most of your money for organizing the party which will include mailing invitations, long-distance phone calls, name tags, etc. Once it is figured out you should allocate the costs to each family. There are fund-raisers held by the families which are used to pay for the miscellaneous group expenses. Usually they organize a white elephant auction for the group, or a bake sale. 5. After that you should select the length of the party and its location. For example, one day party can be held at Aunt Mary and Uncle Joe's house, or this can be as elaborate as a week long Alaskan cruise. 6. Menu planning can be the most interesting and at the same time one of the most difficult parts of your preparations. If you plan a one or two day reunion, ask everyone to bring along a few prepared dishes. Assign each family a category of food in order to have a good distribution among the courses. Most families have a heritage cookbook. Ask everyone to bring the recipe for their dish to the party and then gather all the recipes to create a cookbook. But if noone in your family likes cooking you can go to a restaurant or bring in a caterer to handle all of the meal details. Party Activities, Memories and Final Thoughts
1. If you are planning a large family reunion, various party activities are necessary to break the ice. The examples of the party games can be: guess the baby picture, name tags and other fun and helpful activities. If your guests hit the road to have fun like for example going to the amusement park it will look nice if you give evryone the same T-shirt. This will look very fun and can keep connections going during the outing. 2. If your family party is going to extend more than a day you should plan all the activities in advance. For instance, all your group can visit a historical site, go to the beach for a clambake, have a picnic in the park or even play bowling. 3. You should also consider the keepsakes for after the party. For example, you can assemble a scrapbook of pictures from the reunion for everyone or create a family heritage cookbook. All these activities require coordination: someone should take care of photo-taking or gathering the information for your scrapbook or cookbook.
Final Recommendations
* The more elaborate your reunion in terms of the amount of guests, the length of the gathering and the distance traveled, the more time you should spend on planning your party. Sometimes it may take over a year to prepare everything for the family's first reunion. * You can plan your reunions as only one-time gatherings or hold the regularly depending on the budget, location an interest of your relatives. * In subsequent years it will becom much easier to organise such gatherings. You will find a format that works for your group and you can duplicate it each year. * When everything is planned, send out the official invitations and get deposits for any accomodations which should be booked beforehand.
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