Use this guide to plan your high school reunion

High school reunions are exciting - you get to catch up with your old classmates, reminisce about the good old days, and find out how life has progressed for others.

But being in charge of organising a high school reunion can be a daunting experience. Tracking down and coordinating so many alumni, who all have different schedules or have moved elsewhere (not to mention the few who always fall off the map completely!) can seem like a mammoth task. Here's where TryBooking can help to make sure that your high school reunion will be as successful as it is momentous for your old classmates. 

Planning for the reunion

If you are responsible for getting your high school reunion up and running, planning is the most important stage and it's imperative you get this right. Some of the things you will need to consider are:

• How will you find your old classmates? Two of the easiest tools to find old classmates are word of mouth and looking up your old classmates on popular social media such as Facebook or LinkedIn. Run through your yearbook to make sure you haven't missed any names. Then, make sure to set up an online event page so that those you contact can refer to it and share it to their own network.

• When will you hold your reunion? The success of your high school reunion will depend on how many people actually show up. For this reason, you need to get in touch with your old classmates to find a date when everyone will be available. The earlier you get in touch with your old classmates, the easier it will be for them to plan to come to the reunion.

• How will you fund your high school reunion? No matter how big or small your high school reunion is there are going to be costs involved. The easiest way to cover the costs of your high school reunion if through the sale of tickets to your reunion.

• Who will help you organise the reunion? Finally, you'll need a committee to organise all of the above points. Form a small team with old classmates whom you know will be reliable, driven and do a good job. The committee needs to be across everything from budget, venue, RSVPs/ticketing, catering and entertainment to promote the event.

There are multiple benefits to selling your reunion tickets online:

• You can gather a diverse group of classmates (especially those who have relocated) together on a single event page and track all of your RSVPs in the one place.

• Your RSVPs will be directly linked to your cash flow and you can easily generate reports about sales.

• On TryBooking, you can access funds from ticket sales prior to the reunion and you can set up an extra donation step when your classmates book their tickets. This can go to your event, or you can donate it back to the school.

What’s best for you is that at only 30 cents per ticket sale, our fees are extremely reasonable, allowing more funds to go towards planning a successful high school reunion.

Promoting the reunion

You want as many former classmates to know about the high school reunion as possible. In your planning stage you would have located the names and contact details for as many old classmates as possible, so now it’s just a matter of putting those details to good use.

The best way to promote your event is usually to create a Facebook event which then contains a link to your ticketing page. Also consider reaching out to people via LinkedIn, Twitter or email, especially for those you can't find on Facebook. By covering several social media sites at once, you increase your chances of being noticed by more classmates! 

TryBooking can provide you with a custom high school reunion event page and URL. Pop all the necessary details on this page with our tips on designing your event homepage. You can go back and edit this page at any time if the details change: for example, extending the ticket booking window, weather precautions, updating contact numbers etc. By sharing this link around you can ensure that the same important details are viewed by all and that people also have the option to buy a ticket on the spot if they can make it.

Tips for the night

Now that all the challenges of organising your high school reunion have been taken care of it’s now time for you and all of your former classmates to enjoy the reunion. But we are sure you are going to have a few pre-event jitters so here are some tips for the night to help you stay on track:

• Arrive at the venue early and do a final run around just to make sure everything is in place.

• As the school reunion organiser it's good etiquette for you to greet people at the door and collect tickets, so make sure you are ready when the start time arrives.

• And finally, relax – you have put in the hard yards in organising your high school reunion so make sure you take the time to enjoy it.

So there you have it, a guide to planning and hosting your high school reunion that you can put into action simply and easily. But if you have any questions you can send us an email we’d be more than happy to help out!

Good luck with planning your reunion,

The TryBooking Team