What to Expect While Planning a High School Class Reunion
No matter what your high school experience was like, everyone can enjoy the high school class reunion. Seeing where everyone ended up, what they’ve accomplished, and being able to look back on old memories and retell old stories are all incentives to attend your high school reunion. There are some ways that a class reunion can be better-- here is everything you need to consider when preparing a reunion.
Planning a high school reunion requires a team of dedicated alumni to oversee the event from start to finish. This team ought to work well together and be able to divide the tasks of planning up so that everything gets done on time, stays in the budget, and gets the attention it needs to come together with everything else to create a great event.
The very first thing that needs to be figured out is the budget. If the budget is going to be really large, set up an account at the bank specifically for the event and set it up so any transaction requires two people to sign for it. Right away, you want to figure out how much each alumni attending should pay. That number is their share of the cost of the venue, catering, entertainment, etc. Once the overall budget is decided and how it will be divided among the guests, someone needs to make sure that the spending stays within the budget from start to finish.
Another task that needs to completed in the first stages of planning a reunion is gathering contact information of everyone in the class. This involves using online tools and any contact information that the school has to make a list of everyone that will ultimately receive invitations to the class reunion.
Figure out the date and the venue as early as possible. Shop around for a venue and contact local hotels to see if they can offer discounts to alumni that will be coming into town. As soon as you have a venue and date secured, send out invitations to everyone in the class and keep advertising the information. You want to give everyone enough time to set up travel plans to be able to attend the reunion. Keep track of the responses so you know who will be attending.
Next, the team needs to decide what the structure of the event will be. Will it be a single banquet dinner or will it span over the length of a weekend. Often, reunions consist of a cocktail party on a Friday night, a dinner on Saturday, and finally a barbeque on Sunday afternoon. Consider if you will get a DJ or a live band for the event and pick a caterer.
You want the reunion to give everyone a chance to talk and catch up, but there should also be some structure to the event as a whole. Plan some games or prizes (for example, have a prize for the person who had to fly the farthest to get to the reunion), and invite a surprise guest like an old teacher that everyone loved. Make the event memorable and fun.
With the proper planning, a high school class reunion can be a great, memorable event for everyone. It will give people the chance to reminisce about old times, rekindle friendships, and see what everyone in their class accomplished. The people you grew up with in high school played a large part in the person you became, and you have just as much influence on them, so a high school reunion is an event that can be both fun and inspiring.
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