1. Select a date that doesn't interfere with major family holidays (ie: Christmas, Thanksgiving or Easter) or dates that tend to very busy (ie: May proms and graduations). Try to locate the event near major transportation for anyone from out of town. An ideal location is any hotel somewhat near the San Jose airport or downtown. This gives you place for people to spend the night as well as a facility for the event. Encourage local Bay Area classmates to get rooms, too.

2. Organize a committee or hire a reunion planner to track down classmates. Call your school to help with addresses. Many in the Silicon Valley now have web sites to keep track of their alumni. This process should start about one year out. There are several web sites available for locating fellow classmates.

3. Also while you're starting to search for classmates, a good idea is to set up a class web site and/or a group email list. It gives the people you're contacting a place to go. Add some info about your event. Green Wedding DJ will even set up your own link that you can add to your web site or you can email out that will let attendees make music requests. Get people involved in whatever way you can. More of them will come if they've had some part in helping.

4. Send out initial invitations about 6 - 8 months out. You might want to put in the invitation some memories about those school years. Make the invitation fun and up- beat. Enclose a request for any information about other classmates. There are reunion companies that will do this for you and even get you an updated database. You or your committee will still need to make some contact personally, though.

5. As a reminder, at about 3 months send a form asking for personal information like, occupation, spouse's name, # of children, special honors achieved, and info about school life (ie: home room teacher, favorite story, favorite teacher, girlfriend/boyfriend during school years, and activities/clubs engaged in during school years.)



6. Here's also where you might start asking for a current photo and any old photos of your years in school which you can put in a slide show. Or ask different "groups" to make a poster board of their club/group/team to display.

7. As you're contacting your old classmates, you'll eventually come to somebody deceased. Be sure to add them to a memorial section of your slide show. If they are recently deceased, you might ask the family/friends if they would like to make a memorial photo display.

8. If possible invite a former teacher, principal, custodian, librarian or coach that was popular, as a guest of honor. You might need to check a retirement home to locate them, it might be a nice chance for them to get out for an evening. The school may be able to help you with this. Most schools in the Bay Area are very accommodating about helping with reunions.

9. At the event, using name tags, especially with a class photo, can help to recall a person's memories and may avoid an embarrassing situation. A reunion company will usually do this for you, but get out your old yearbook and just scan in the photos. You can find name tag paper at most office supply stores that will print nice on your computer's inkjet (or go to Kinkos)

10. The first 60 - 90 minutes of your reunion will be devoted to socializing. This is a good time to have music played from your school years. DJ's always classify music in three categories (listening and dancing - slow and fast.) Here's the chance to play all the "listening" hits from the year. Don't rush your guests to dance, they haven't met some of these friends for a long time. The longer it's been since you've graduated, the longer you should take until you start dancing.

11. At about the 90 minute mark it is time to address the group and say a few words (or bring up the class president to do it.) maybe give away some prizes from things like: the most children or grandchildren, who traveled the most, longest marriage, the newlyweds of your class, etc. Then start the dancing with the reunion committee or the original class officers. If you get some school trivia or info about some of your classmates, your DJ can give some prizes away throughout the evening as well.

12. Don't restrict the music to just your school years. An experienced entertainer will be able to play a wide range of music to suit everyone tastes, while still mixing in the dance hits of your class. Not everyone wants to dwell in the past, even at reunions. Be sure your reunion DJ knows your "class song" so he can play it at an appropriate spot during the festivities (maybe right before/after dinner or during your slideshow if you haven't added music already.)

13. Make a booklet listing all attendees with current addresses and other pertinent information so that your classmates can renew friends after the reunion has ended. A memory book is great for everyone, including class mates who couldn't make it. Another alternative is to setup a community photo book, where people can each contribute a number of pictures of the evening (or just recent ones of themselves). These are fun to put together and there are a few websites that offer it (Here's a link to one: Blurb Book Smart.)

PS: If you need help putting together a slideshow from your photos, ask how Green Wedding DJ can help put one together for you. We can even make them available to you on DVD's personalized with your school colors and mascot logo.