Saying Your Goodbyes:
When it comes time for your family reunion to come to an end, you want to make sure each of your family members leaves with a smile on his or her face. In order to accomplish this, you will need to make sure to have a committee that is responsible for giving each guest a personal send off. This committee should be sure to thank each guest for coming and to tell them to be sure to come to the next reunion if you are already planning another.
It is also a good idea to come up with some sort of souvenir that you can send home with each family group as it leaves. Ideally, the souvenir should be tied to your family lineage in some way. If you have a family coat of arms, for example, you might want to give each family member a pin with that coat of arms on it. Or, if your family is highly involved with a certain industry or has a famous member somewhere in your lineage, you might pass out something that is related to that field or to that person.
Another option would be to create a detailed family tree ahead of time that includes all of the family members that were invited. You could present these in attractive frames or you could simply laminate them. If possible, include pictures of the family members on your tree.
Or, if you don’t have enough space for a tree, you could create a booklet that has all of the family members inside and a brief biography of these families. In order to pull this one off, you will need to ask each family member to send a recent photo of their family and to write a brief bio to be included in the book. This can be a truly magnificent souvenir and you might even want to pass it out ahead of time so family members can write special notes to one another inside.
With a little creativity and forethought, you should be able to come up with something that will be meaningful and pleasing to each of your family members.