My ten-year high school reunion is two weeks away. I'm on the planning committee :censor:. (yes, I must have been smoking crack to agree to that.) We've been working on it since September of last year. That may sound like a long time - but not when you consider that we had almost 600 people in our graduating class -- so just trying to contact everyone in our class was a huge task. 
We divided up the yearbook pages amongst the committee members - so each person had about 40 people to locate.
Lesson one - we needed a bigger committee.
We gave ourselves til January of this year to locate everyone on our lists. That was about 4 months. In December, some of our committee members hadn't contacted anyone on their list yet. :banghead:
Lesson two - those people you didn't like in highschool? you still don't like them
Ten years isn't a very long time - but people have moved, their parents have moved, their friends have moved; so finding classmates was a nightmare for the most part. Our high school doesn't keep any type of alumni records :weep: - so we had nothing to start from except our yearbook. The girls were, of course, the hardest to find. We just had their names at the time of graduation. Who knows what their married name is - Nightmare.
So once we finally had a decent number of graduates contacted (just over 300) - we sent out our first mailing. This was a general info mailing, with a registration form, and a list of classmates we couldn't find yet. We were hoping that these 300 classmates we found could help us find the other 300 we couldn't find. And they did - which was cool. Everybody knows where somebody is ... so we found about 150 more people that way.
I had set up a very basic website early on -- which made it super easy to share information with our entire class. The committee has access to a section of the site where we can update the graduate database online - and we're all part of a mailing list through which we keep track of all the little details. The registration form dumps straight into the database too. So with the click of a button we can quickly see how many people are registered, paid, etc. That's handy so that everyone has access to the same info at all time -- I have to say that I don't know how we would have made it this far without the website, mailing list, and especially the online database. Saved so much time.
Lesson three: It's good to have at least one geek on your planning committee. :thumbsup:
An interesting fact about our committee is that only one person on the committee still lives in our hometown. Which means only one person on the committee lives in the town where all the reunion events are happening. Wheee! What fun for her! :dance:
Lesson four: You need more hometown people on the committee. Lots of running around/errands to do. All of us out of town people can do a lot via email and phone -- but some things just have to be done in person.
My mom has always been active in planning her reunions - her class recently had their 35th reunion. Her experience with this has helped us a lot - and maybe it's because of her that I knew that reunions have to be totally funded by the registration fees. The school doesn't have a fund for reunions. Everything you spend for the reunion has to be covered with registration fees. I think some people in our class thought our high school must have a slush fund or something for reunions - because some people thought $40/person was ridiculous. But when you break it down into facility rental, catering, printing fees, postage -- it all adds up. We're running an extremely tight budget. From some people's comments, it's like they think we're trying to make a profit or something. Grrrr. :headache:
Lesson five - you are going to have some cheapskates and belligerent losers. They would complain if it was $3 a person! Forget about them and move on. Did you really want to see that person at the reunion anyway?
So now we're two weeks out. We've done several mailings; we're now on a weekly email to everyone in our class (we're still missing about 125 people, but finding more and more every day); the newspaper has run lots of articles for us for free; I think we've done a pretty decent job of getting the word out.
The website has been a great tool. At least 90% of our class has registered and paid online. Less than a handful of people actually mailed in a physical registration form and check. People were more than willing to pay a little extra for the convenience of paying online (we tacked on the paypal fees to the registration cost).
The next two weeks are going to be crazy. The week of the reunion, I am out of town. (I'm a counselor at summer camp with my church's student ministry all week. It will not be a relaxing week -- it will be long, long, long days. :whip: But I'm sure I'll still have fun!!) We get back on Friday afternoon and Steve and I will have to immediately get back on the road and head to my hometown. The main dinner event is on Saturday night, and then the family picnic at the school is on Sunday afternoon.
Yadda yadda yadda. All this to say -- I've been slammed doing reunion stuff and I'm at the stage where I just want the event to be done and dusted.
Lesson six: it will definitely take me another ten years before I'm willing to do this again.
10 years! You're ooollllllld. :tongue:
Our reunion was more than $40. I can't remember exactly how much, but I think it was closer to $80. I'm not sure where all the money went. It was just a dinner. Hmmm. Now that I think about it, there was also a picnic the day before I didn't go to. Still! $40 seems reasonable.
I love High School reunions. I meet old friends that I haven't kept in touch with for years! But, I must say that our High School reunions aren't that grand. Nevertheless, I really appreciate the efforts done by the committee in putting the graduating class together. It definitely needs a lot of hardwork.
My friend had the opportunity to be a committee member for a High School reunion that we had. She asked all the help she can get. She had to juggle being a designer, a mother, and a committee member. So when I read your post, it made me appreciate the committee members' efforts all the more. I didn't realize that it takes months to organize a High School reunion.