Humor us for a minute or so.
Imagine yourself being transported back in time to when you were in high school or college.
What do you see? What friends are you around? Where are you hanging out? Is everyone’s hair different? Their clothes?
The thoughts you just had is where all class reunions begin.
Where All Class Reunions Begin
Most class reunions begin because someone decided to open up their high school or college yearbook and began to reminisce about the past. A sense of curiosity sets in and leads the person down the path of inquiring what happened to everyone. It is this want to reconnect that serves as the initial seed. It is probably the reason why you are here reading this article in the first place.
So Where Do You Start?
In order for the class reunion planning to begin, you need to know the answer to the following questions:
Why Plan A Reunion
People are inherently different and as such, some keep in touch while others don’t. In both cases however, a class reunion offers them a chance to reminisce and catch up with people that share a common past.
Class reunions also provide:
- A great foundation for future friendships, and even some new romances
- A chance to share lots of laughter, and memories
- Ability to expand your professional network
- An opportunity to catch up with your college or high school teachers and professors
- A chance to revisit local hangouts and see how they have changed.
- An opportunity do something that will benefit everyone and will provide tremendous satisfaction to you as well.
But in order to start, you need a good team of like minded people.
Who Should Plan A Class Reunion
A class reunion planning committee is an extremely important part of any reunion planning process since they serve as the nucleus of the entire event. They are the ones that volunteer their time, effort and in some cases, money, to organize an event that will benefit the entire class.
This group is responsible for providing the framework of the event, recruiting the right people to help, finding classmates, blocking hotel rooms, and following up to make sure things went well.
Having great leadership and a hard working committee that organizes early is a requirement if you are looking to plan a great class reunion.
One of the first questions that the committee members will ask is “So where do we start?”
How To Plan A Class Reunion
All the details of planning a class reunion cannot be put into one article (it would put you to sleep anyways). So we designed a step by step guide to help with planning every aspect of the class reunion. Start by sharing the following link with everyone who is already involved, “How To Plan A Class Reunion“.
In the above referenced guide, you will find answers to questions, tried and true tips, advice, and free downloads for every member of your planning team.
But before you get started planning the class reunion, there are certain underlying principles that you should know from the very start. They are:
Start Early
The popular saying “A Journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step”. In this case, make sure you take that single step at least a year or two ahead of the actual class reunion. If your class size was less than 250, then a year should be more than enough to get everybody on board. If your class size is greater, then give yourself a year to two years.
Starting early provides two very distinct advantages. The first is that you give yourself more time and therefore have better attendance at the class reunion. The other advantage is a class reunion that costs less since you had more time research and negotiate with vendors (like Hotels)
Get A Committee To Help
The success of a class reunion largely depends on active participation, and a great deal of commitment on the part of a few volunteers that make up the planning committee. This committee generally consists of several people that meet regularly to organize the event, coordinate volunteers, and negotiate with vendors. Having passionate, hard working, and active people on the planning committee not only yields a better class reunion, it also results in a larger turnout.
Stay Focused And Organized
Getting organized early and recruiting help will only take you so far. In order to complete the circle, you need to make sure that you are following up on everyone to ensure a smooth event. Keeping up to date on the class reunion budget, contracts, and responsibilities can be very intimidating. The trick is to stay focused, organized and communicate with the planning committee regularly.
What Resources Will I Need To Get Started
Our step by step class reunion planning guide has lots of free resources to make your reunion planning simpler. While we can’t do the planning for you, we have put together a bunch of free downloads, templates, sample letters, and much more in our class reunion planning resource center. Everything is free to use, download, and modify to your needs.
What should you do next?
Check out some of our tips to plan a great class reunion.