Family fun reunions create a sense of heritage among your family. When planning a family reunion, many questions come to mind including: how often, when, how long, and where. Other questions affecting your planning are how the reunion will be organized, how to pay for the reunion and special needs of family members. By successfully addressing these questions, you improve the chances that your family reunion will achieve the goals you set out to accomplish. You'll also need a theme for your gathering.

How Often Should You Have Your Family Reunion

Many families gather for a day or so every year. These annual gatherings are opportunities for cousins, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters and parents to catch up on each other's lives and spend quality time together. In many cases, families who meet yearly gather at the same state park, or an individual's house. For larger reunions requiring extended family, you might want the interval to be longer. Our larger family gathers every five years at a prime vacation location. These gatherings are typically for three days.

How to Choose the Date for Your Reunion

You should set the reunion date to accommodate as many people as possible. However, the single most important rule in choosing the date for your family reunion is to stick with the date once it is chosen. For this reason, you must carefully choose the date. You might want to send out a questionaire to the extended family asking family members to provide a ranking of dates from a list of several dates you show in your questionaire. They should also indicate if they can't make any of the dates in your list. Using your questionaire, you can choose the date satisfying most family members and stick with it.

How Long Should Your Reunion Last

Annual family reunions tend to be shorter than reunions that are conducted every two to five years. Most annual family reunions are a single day. Reunions that are held every two to five years are from 2 to 5 days in duration. In these less frequent cases, the 3 day mini-vacation reunions are most common.