High school reunion: organization tips?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Well, I seem to have ended up on the committee to plan my high school reunion Evanston Township High School, Class of '86, in case any other Dopers were in my class). The 20th ought to be much easier to plan than the 10th was, what with the Internet and all, but there are still a zillion logistical details to take care of, and I have no idea where to begin.

Has anyone ever participated in an undertaking like this? We need to track down the graduating class (there were over 700 of us), set up a database, figure out how to figure out what the turnout will be and sell tickets (luckily a number of alums are in the IT field, and we are tentatively planning to do most of this via the Web with Paypal), etc. And one alum owns a restaurant/bar where we are planning to hold the main event, if turnout allows (the restaurant has a capacity limit of 300, but there is a parking lot that belongs to the funeral home next door, where we are hoping to set up a tent). At the moment I’m mostly relieved that a) everyone seemed to be on the same page re: not making this a stuffy, formal event in some sterile hotel meeting room, like the 10th reunion was, with a bad wedding band; and b) there was a consensus that the bar should be cash, so those of us who are nondrinkers or light drinkers aren’t stuck paying $100 to subsidize everyone else’s drinking.

So, any organizational tips? neat little things you’ve seen done at reunions? things we should watch out for?

2

One thing I would just humbly add to your list is having a back-up for yourself.

For our 10-year reunion, we had one person pretty much in charge of it. When she got into some shit, the whole thing fell apart; no reunion.

You have a lot to deal with, and it is not an easy task and I do applaud you for undertaking it. Keep you back-up person in the loop, is all.

I can’t help with your other questions, just saying this so you won’t think I’m ignoring them.

You are a good 'un for undertaking this, and I do think your classmates will are fortunate that you are considering such issues in advance. Thumbs up to you, it is not an easy task.

3

Maybe Rico will pop in here. His wife just served a life sentence as organizer of her HS reunion, I’m sure they could give you several do’s and a few don’ts!

4

Here’s my best advice, having served as Lost Classmates chair for my 25th and being by Kathy’s side as she chaired her 30th:

HIRE A REUNION ORGANIZER! :smiley:

They take all the headaches away, handle all the minute details, and let you enjoy the evening. Check them out carefully before signing anything, and ask to speak with past reunion committee organizers to see if they were satisfied with the service they received.

If you’re still insistent on doing it yourself, the word to remember is delegate. Break down the reunion chores into tiny bite-size chunks and don’t let anyone bite off more than you think they can chew. Get good people behind you and they won’t let you down. Businessmen and women are great to have, as they have the organizing experience.

Start your own bank account. Keep all money separate from personal funds. Insist on receipts and get a good treasurer.

Best idea: Unless the reunion is in your back yard, rent a hotel room as close to the reunion site as possible (walking distance is best) for two nights - the night before and the night of the reunion. You won’t have to worry about driving back and forth.

Most of all, Have Fun! The 20th is usually better than the 10th, as by this time everyone is comfortable with who they are and can enjoy each other’s company better. Cliques still form, but they won’t stay together all night.

Good luck!

5

If anyone on the committee suggests having the class members stand up and give a short resume of their activities since leaving school, club them to the floor and run them out of town.

We had the best reunions when the formal program was no more than 20 minutes or so and otherwise let people just visit.

6

Oh goodness, I am not doing this all myself! There were 10 people there today, and others have offered help from a distance. I may have my eccentric moments, but I’m not completely insane!

7

Moved to IMHO.

-xash
General Questions Moderator

8

I have never been to a high school reunion for one simple reason, most of my friends were a year older or a year younger. Not that I didn’t like people in my graduating class, I just never hung around with them all that much back then so why would I go see them today?

However, since then they have started to have reunions with four years…for instance, you would open up the reunion to all of the graduating classes from 1984-1988. It is still the official class reunion of 1986, you are just being more inclusive. This greatly increases attendance and makes it more fun as, let’s be honest, at that age in high school, the girls liked the older guys and the older guys liked the younger girls - so it is only appropriate to invite them all to see what they “missed” over the years.

9

I had a committee of 15 and 2 years to organize it and I still ate, drank, and slept the reunion. I don’t think I slept through the night once during those 2 years. It’s been over for 7 months and it still haunts me. I just got an email regarding it last week (which I still haven’t answered). If you have any specific questions, let me know. Maybe I’ll answer. :wink:

Kathy

10

Our reunions are weekend long – a Friday night informal gathering at a local bar, Saturday a.m. coffee, Saturday afternoon golf, Saturday night “event”, and a Sunday morning brunch. Some people go to one thing, some intrepid souls go to all of them!

My favorite thing at our last reunion – someone made a CD of the songs that were popular in 1963 and printed a photo of our high school on the CD. The “cover art” was our individual yearbook photo. I don’t know what it cost to do this, but she gave them away.

Our organizer had done a short Powerpoint movie thing, with pictures, newspaper headlines, music, etc. We watched it at the Saturday night event, and CD copies were auctioned to help raise $$ for the next reunion.

Most entertaining reunion yet.

11

:: bump ::

Well, the one tip nobody thought to mention, though it was probably common sense in retrospect, is…decentralize. No matter how organized the guy who organizes the main planning meeting seems to be, make sure everyone has everyone else’s contact info, not to mention the password to the e-mail list of the 100+ people who have already signed up for updates.

So here we are, 3+ months after our initial meeting and after numerous e-mails and calls to the first meeting chair to see what the hell was going on, and he has been completely AWOL until last week. Words cannot properly express how angry the rest of us are; we could have been spending the past months organizing and tracking people down, but as some people had already bought plane tickets for the reunion (which is now less than a month away), it’s too late to change the date. Sadly, this means that probably most of the people I want to see the most, who aren’t local, won’t be able to make it.

Given the short amount of time left, any ideas on how we can track down the largest number of people the most quickly? I plan to put my Googling skills to work on the people I know, for whom I am most likely to be able to sort out the false hits, and send out e-mails with reservation info, etc. The remaining members of the committee had a very productive meeting on Sunday, and it’s a damn good thing that we have the restaurant booked for Saturday night because the owner and a couple of his partners are members of our graduating class.

They are taking reservations and prepayments directly, which will save a lot of logistical hassles, but we still have to nail down events for Friday night (probably a casual thing in a bar somewhere), and possibly Sunday (we are trying to draft someone with a large backyard for a potluck picnic). Saturday during the day, one committee member who works at the school will be giving a tour, and that is also the date of the first football game of the season, so that’s good.

So far on the plate for Saturday night, we have:

– DJ in the works

– Fabulous buffet dinner

– Open Mike Hour before the DJ dgoes on (my high school had an excellents arts program, especially theater and music, and a number of classmates are professionals these days)

– Someone had the idea of putting on the invitations that people should bring a plain white T-shirt; the idea is to have a bunch of fabric markers, so people can sign each other’s shirts, do silly drawings, whatever)

– Some posterboards with various themes for people to make their contributions: Confess Your Secret High School Crush, Your Most Embarrassing Moment, Are You In Touch With X?, that sort of thing.

The 10th reunion was a rather stuffy, formal affair in a hotel ballroom, and my sole goal in attending the initial planning meeting had been to ty to convince everyone that the 20th should be a casual, fun thing mainly aimed at giving people the opportunity to see each other and reconnect in a casual, relaxed atmosphere. I’d never intended to get involved in the actual planning at all, but now that I’ve been sucked in, I want to do a knockout job of it, which is rather difficult under the circumstances.

We can leave things like scanning photos, etc. to the last minute, and we plan to do a website afterwards where people can upload their own photos and such, but any other ideas? Keep 'em coming!