It isn’t often that you can get the entire family together in one place, so if you are hosting a family reunion, there are many ways you can make the day memorable. There are many social events that you can include for your reunion to bring together relatives that know each other well and long lost cousins who may not be as well acquainted. While you don’t have to plan out the entire day, you should include some activities to help break the ice and create fun memories for everyone.
Ideas for Family Reunion Activities
Every family gathering needs food, so one thing you can do is make the reunion a potluck rather than catering the event. This way everyone can make their favourite dish and bring it to the reunion for others to sample. When you send out the invitations, suggest that those who wish to share their recipes bring copies of them to hand out to relatives who want to know their secret ingredients.
Family Reunion Quilt
Another group activity is to have everyone or every family bring a quilt block to the reunion. You will need to send out the request when you mail, or email, the invitations and include the size of the block that is needed. Ask that the block include something unique about their family and have everyone’s names on it. The blocks should be given to volunteers who are making the quilt, which can be given to a special family member or can be raffled off to make money to hold the next family reunion.
Hire a Photo Booth
You can help your relatives make lasting memories with a Melbourne photo booth hire in which they can take individual or group pictures. Up to 10 people can fit in a photo booth at the same time, and you can choose from a variety of backgrounds to use for the pictures. To make it even more fun, props like clothes or hats from different decades can be worn in the pictures to help represent your family’s history.
Share Family Memorabilia
Another activity that needs to be planned in advance is to have family members bring items and old photos to share with everyone at the reunion. Set up a display of family members that cannot be identified in old photos and maybe someone will be able to put a name to the face. In addition to the memorabilia, you can include your family history and have people fill in any information that is missing.
There are many things you can do to break the ice between family members who have never met and help create lasting memories with some of the older members of your extended family. Be sure to take plenty of photos so everyone has a keepsake of the family reunion so he or she can remember it fondly, especially after older members have passed. With a little advanced planning, you will create the type of reunion that people will want to go back to year after year.