5 Reasons to Plan a Family Reunion

It’s that time of year—the time when school is out for the kids, families hit the road for long-awaited road trips, and nothing seems quite as peaceful as a weekend cookout.

I remember loving the summer season while growing up in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Fond du Lac is a 40,000-person city in between Milwaukee, Madison, and Green Bay. Like other midwestern destinations, the winters are harsh, but up there you live for the summertime. Wisconsin’s rolling fields, beautiful lakes, and incredible summer weather is hard to beat. Since leaving my hometown after high school, I remain nostalgic for the summers when family and friends were at the heart of everything.

Another great thing to do in the summer? Host or attend a family reunion.

Only a few times growing up did a member of the extended family bring us together for a reunion. It was a classic experience—we rented a pavilion in a local park, invited dozens of family members from our family tree, and everyone brought a dish to pass. We played lawn games, the adults drank beer, and everyone was all smiles as they connected with people they hadn’t seen in years.

Memories like these are great reminders of the powerful impact family reunion events have on our life.

About four years ago in the midst of my other family genealogy work—which I wrote about on the about page of this site and in an earlier blog post—I had an idea of capping off my Loomans family history project with a family reunion. Having identified more than 200 descendants of my great-great-grandparents, I was intrigued by what it would take to bring the extended family together. I also did the math and found that 2021 happened to be 175 years our family had lived in Wisconsin.

It seemed a perfect excuse to host an event for the memory books. My biggest problem was that I had no clue how to plan a reunion event. My own ignorance on this topic and the lack of available ‘how-to’ resources were the primary inspirations for writing and making available the Planning Your Family Reunion Guide & Workbook. Perhaps you can leverage some of the tips, takeaways, resources, and templates I’ve made available on this site and in the workbook to help plan your own event.

For this post, however, let’s start with the basics and focus on the five reasons you need to plan a family reunion.

Reason #1: Expand Your Genealogy Efforts

If you’re an experienced or aspiring genealogist, bringing your family together is one of the best and quickest ways to capture a lot of context about your family ancestry. Through planned and ad-hoc activities at the event, you can document favorite stories, showcase and discuss artifacts like old family bibles and journals, solicit the family’s help in identifying people in old photographs, and validating the branches, birth dates, and death dates on the family tree.

At our family reunion a couple years ago we had a six-foot tall family tree printed on large sheets of paper and asked our guests to add sticky notes with corrections to the board. It was a fun and interactive exercise that drove family participation while also providing critical inputs and feedback to our family records.

Interested in how to get started with your genealogy efforts, see our recent blog post on the topic.

Reason #2: Connect Members of Your Extended Family

There is something incredibly special about seeing two family members who haven’t seen one another for decades. Your reunion becomes a space for members of the extended family to swap stories, memorialize the past, and talk about their shared heritage. How many other times is this opportunity presented? As a reunion coordinator you have an exciting opportunity to bridge the gaps between generations and branches of the family tree.

I remember seeing my grandfather of 80+ years greet his cousin of the same age. The two hadn’t seen each other in more than 30 years. They hugged and laughed, remembering the last family reunion they attended together back in the 1980s. Watching these connections is one of the most meaningful parts of the hosting experience.

Reason #3: Celebrate a Major Milestone

If you look hard enough you will find something to celebrate. Whether it’s commemorating your family’s immigration, a shared ancestor’s birthday, or the founding of your hometown, there are lots of excuses for hosting a family reunion. I love celebrating with a theme in mind, which made the 175th anniversary of my family’s settlement in Wisconsin all the more special. Whether it’s 25 years or 25 decades, family reunions are a great way to bring people together and recognize a significant milestone.

Reason #4: Accomplish a Personal Objective

Like finishing a 10K race or putting the final touches on a home renovation, coordinating and hosting a family reunion is a humbling experience. You have a big goal to start—invite 150 family members, collect more family history information, or any number of items—and you spend months working toward it. Finally you reach the climactic moment where you see dozens of family members arriving to the park pavilion or banquet hall. They excitedly greet one another, remark at the great decorations, and are tearful while they walk along a table of old framed photographs. In that moment it hits you. Your hard work paid off.

Planning a family reunion is a great personal goal and has substantial impact on others. I guarantee you’ll never regret hosting the event. Bringing others together, seeing them interact, and hearing their appreciation provides significant personal fulfillment.

Reason #5: Plan for the Unexpected

We never know when someone’s time is expired. The family reunion you coordinate could be the final time your family comes together to celebrate the act of simply being a family. Reunions are a great way to show appreciation for older generations and provide space for them to interact with their descendants.

I know what this feels like firsthand. In the reunion our family hosted two years ago we brought together 100+ members of our extended family tree, including the three remaining people of my grandfather’s generation. Of 18 original cousins, only three were left. Seeing them interact for the first time in years was special for everyone at the event, especially as they shared stories of reunions from growing up in the 1940s and 1950s.

Less than six weeks later, my grandfather died of a cardiac episode. To this day members of the family remark how much the family reunion meant to them—and him—to come together one last time. We never know how much rope we have left, so the importance of these events is difficult to overstate.