Family Reunion: Everything You Need to Know to Plan Unforgettable Get-Togethers for Every Kind of Family

by Jennifer Crichton

Today more than ever, American families are scattered to the wind. Yet perhaps for this very reason, families have also been getting together for reunions in unprecedented numbers. Planning a reunion is a pleasurable but complicated undertaking that requires foresight and planning, and here to assist is Family Reuinion , an indispensable guide and sourcebook that shows how to organize and conduct four basic reunions: a Backyard Barbecue for siblings and cousins, a Homecoming Weekend, an Extended Family Reunion, and a Family Camp, which typically lasts a week and gathers up to 100 participants. Accessible and packed with ideas and information, the book shows how to create a workable timetable (18 months before a large reunion is not too soon to start planning), organize a committee, and set up a fund for expenses (and to help less-well-off members attend). There are chapters on location, including little-known church camps and family resorts; on scheduling activities for kids and adults, day and evening; on genealogy; on recording the event; and even on etiquette, including how to handle black sheep, in-laws, and stepchildren. With case studies of real-life reunions and duotone photographs throughout, this is the book that helps us connect.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0761105859
• ISBN13: 9780761105855
• Release Date: July 1998
• Publisher: Workman Publishing
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

great for 1st time reunion planners

This book gave us lots of ideas for our family reunion.Great for us first time reunion planners!Get this book and have a great time with your family!

Family Reunion

We teach genealogy classes and for a fun topic for the summer months, we gave a class on having family reunions and/or how a reunion can help you with your genealogical research. This book was a must have. Jennifer did a great job in putting together many ideas in planning various types of reunions from a picnic to a week long camp and everything in between. Thanks for a great tool that we will pass on to all the branches of our families.

This was a wonderful book in helping to plan our reunion.

I wish I would have found this book in the earlier stages of planning our family reunion. It has many wonderful ideals. I am using the form to put together a family directory and also using the Family group form in hopes that our family geneology can be past down from generation to generation from here on out.

Very helpful at whatever stage of planning you may be!

Jennifer Crichton has put together an unbelievably helpful book. Whether one has come to the panic stage of time and planning or should the reader simply be considering a family reunion some time in the distant future this book is a must. This author and her resources have been there, done that! There seems a mother lode of helpful information on every page. The book is very well designed with annecdotal stories of various kinds of families and family gatherings interspersed with the conventional exposition of how things are best done. I found every one of her suggestions that I thought applicable to our reunion (and there were many) was received with great enthusiasm by everyone. If it is your first time planning a reunion or if you are looking for fresh ideas for ongoing reunions this is the book! Our family is going to pass this book on to each chairperson or host for future reunions.

a must-read for planning a formal or large get-together

This book was great. I was hesitant about buying it because the books I bought to plan my wedding--which bordered on disaster--were not very helpful. I found so many good ideas for two family get-togeyhers we're having this year. My father's family reunion is a summer event, and I am planning a formal dinner for my maternal grandmother's 80th birthday this fall. My sister liked the ideas that I presented to her from the book, and she decided to make a family yearbook. we used the info sheet included in the book to make a data sheet for our family. We are both quite excited about this project. Our family reunions should be the best ever.