Ok, now it is time for us to get started on planning an wonderful family reunion.
The first step you need to take is to determine your actual purpose of the reunion. I know, it might sound crazy. After all, your basic goal is to simply get your family members together and to have a good time. Nonetheless, there should be a bigger goal that you are trying to achieve other than physically gathering your relatives in the same space.
By coming up with a goal for your family reunion, the rest of the activities will flow more easily because you can plan the reunion around this theme. For example, you might decide that you want your family members to share a favorite memory with the rest of the memory during your reunion. That is great – but, just how do you expect to get them to start talking?
Most people don’t walk into a group setting and immediately start sharing memories with those around them. If they do, many younger people will likely roll their eyes, tune out, and find something “more interesting” to do without actually giving old grandpa Joe a chance to tell a great story about his childhood. These are important moments of your family heritage that you want every generation to experience.
So, how do you get the young ‘uns to listen to the “old foggies?” You make a game out of it! Everyone likes games, no matter how young or old.
We will talk more about games in later blog postings. But, hopefully, you now have a better idea of why you need to come up with an overall goal for the family reunion. Once you have a goal or a theme, you will be better able to create activities that will help get you to that goal. In fact, you will likely discover that all of your planning becomes much easier when you first come up with a purpose for your reunion.
Now you have an assignment before moving on to the next posting: decide on what you hope to achieve with your family reunion. Then, move on to the next step in the planning process.