Planning a reunion

I said yesterday that I was taking something new on, and I had to be crazy to do it, but really, it's not that bad.

One thing is that the parameters of this project are fairly finite. I know what to do and when to do it by. That doesn't necessarily make the workload light, but it's manageable, and it will lead to some social time, which will probably be good.

I am planning a 25th reunion.

Last year the year before us had one, and I was kind of accidentally invited. By "accidentally", I mean that the person who invited me does random invites and does not think about years. It sounded fun, so I went with some minor guilt, and thought that our class should really do one.

The other key piece of information is that the girls in my family came at five-year intervals. That is mainly a result of my parents changing their minds a few times on how many children they wanted. As my class hits year 25 (which is a cool year, but the official reunions only happen on the decades), my older sister is invited to her 30th reunion and my younger sisters are invited to their 20th.

This has given me many opportunities to hear about why they are not going to theirs. Misty is not going because it is too expensive and not a good value. Julie and Maria are not going because they talk to people on Facebook and who needs it?

Those points have some validity. If you do it through Classic Reunions they really overcharge. I thought our 10-year was great and reasonably priced, but the 20 year was high for the value, and a lot of people did not go because of that, but also because we talk to each other on Facebook.

In addition, for my younger sisters their student body president does not even have it together enough to hire Classic Reunions, so another classmate is trying to organize it, and it is a thankless job, but she is asking for too much input, which people find frustrating and it makes them not take her seriously.

That is probably why I had the dreams of reunions, but it was only on the second one that I realized, "Crap. I need to do this."

It is doable. Things I have been able to learn are that people don't want to spend money, and agonizing over everything and pestering people doesn't help. Simplicity and economy are key.

I have set something up. I haven't invited everyone yet. The yearbook indicates that there were 556 of us. Some of that is wrong, like people from previous years who had issues with graduation credits, but would not consider themselves Class of 1990. I decided to start with a chunk, let other people pass on the invitation, and then I will go through comparing the yearbook, the book from the first reunion, and maybe the graduation program if I can find it. I know not everyone is one Facebook, but I have e-mail addresses for at least two people who aren't.

There are little technical issues, like I thought maybe a photo album could work as a memory book - everyone put one photo and a description telling what's going on with you, but I don't see a way to do that for an event. There are technically two events, but I didn't want to separate them, making the RSVP information not as complete as it could be. Those are still workable.

Sometimes it's nice to have projects where you know for sure when you're done.