How to Plan a Successful Family Reunion

Many families these days plan large Family Reunions for their entire clan. These Reunions are a great way to reunite the entire family and spend some quality time together. Different families plan differently, but a four year interval is quite popular, and it's always fun to see the new additions to the family in that time, and how grown up the children look from the last Reunion. However, planning a family Reunion can feel like an overwhelming and endless task, so here are a few tips of the trade to help with your next Family Reunion.

-You will need to decide on the time frame for the reunion. How long the Reunion is will designate the amount of food and refreshments to be purchased. This will also stipulate the amount to be paid by each person.

-Cooking & Food Preparation is dreaded by many at such an event. However, there is a simple and painless process. If each individual family unit is responsible for preparing, cooking, and cleaning up afterwards one meal than it is much less tiresome. It can be a good bonding time for the family unit, and one meal is relatively painless. Depending on the length of the Reunion and amount of people/families it may need to be increased to two but it is relatively simple overall. If you hang the cooking schedule up in the kitchen than everyone will know their designated time to feed the clan.

-Meals to Prepare. Keep the meals simple such as soup and salad, or barbeques. You don't want to become too gourmet in your cooking when there are so many people of various ages to feed. It is also important to check for any food allergies within the group of people attending the Reunion.

-Put together an Activities schedule. You will want to have activities for children and adults, as it's a family reunion it's always important that there is something for everyone. Again, each family should help with the set up and running of at least one active. This will keep everyone involved in the events taking place at the reunion. A couple of ideas are:

• Scavenger Hunts
• Silent Auction (each family brings one item to donate to the auction)
• Arts and Crafts for the Kids
• Talent Show
• Iron Chef Contest
• Sing-along's
• Prepare a Family Cookbook by having each family bring one or two of their favourite family recipes.

-Location, Location, Location! Once you figure out how many people are attending it's important to find a location that has motels and hotels in close proximity as well as RV or Camping grounds for those outdoors families. You will also need a kitchen and hall large enough to feed and cook for the entire group.

-Cleanup Time. Different families arrive and leave at different times during a reunion, and not everyone will stay for the entire duration. Make sure that you have enough volunteers to assist with the cleanup of the facilities at the end of the Reunion.

Family Reunions are special times and those memories should be recorded as it's not every day that the entire family will get together. A popular way to remember this time is to have one large picture taken of the entire family, and then individual family unit pictures. It's a great way to record the moment, and have a special memory to look back on.