How will we ever pull this together?

It seemed like a fun, easy idea — at the time. My cousin Ann asked if I thought we should have a reunion with all of our Beatty family members. “Sure,” I replied immediately. Would I co-host? “Absolutely!”

Then, we began pre-planning how to mount this event. It became very clear, very quickly, that we might have underestimated everything involved with creating our reunion.

Ann volunteered to track everyone down: this was at least three months of emails, phone calls, and White Pages searches.

I agreed to conduct registration and collect monies. What were my options to do this? Group emails? Text threads? Facebook private group? Nothing seemed right for everything we needed to accomplish. Finally, I turned to my partner in problem-solving: I Googled “family reunion planning.”

Hooray! A plethora of options were immediately available. How to choose?

We needed the capacity for everyone to register themselves and submit payment online. We also wanted to be able to exchange photos and notes among ourselves. Of course, all of this needed to be affordable.

Most reunion-planning sites offered these capabilities, so how could we select the right one? After comparing different sites and features, we picked MyEvent.com. This choice was largely deter- mined because they advertised that they had been offering reunion planning services for over 20 years. That potential expertise helped us feel as though they would be reliable partners in our venture. We were very pleased with the choice.

MyEvent.com processed all payments perfectly. Attendees were able to add photos of themselves and their family members with well-executed captions. Updates were easy to incorporate, and hyperlinks could be added to pages with minimal effort. We had an inviting home page with an easy-to-follow menu of pages. MyEvent. com included a countdown to our event and a map of all registered users. Best of all, there was immediate help available through the chat function on my dashboard.

One consideration that was forefront in my mind--and likely the site’s designers and support staff--was that many of our registrants were over 60 years old. Granted, we are a fairly computer-literate bunch, but some of our skills have definitely deteriorated following retirement! Regardless, the site was so user-friendly that fewer than five of our 100 attendees had any problems with the process.

We wouldn’t hesitate to recommend that reunion planners investigate MyEvent.com to see if it’s right for them. We’d use it again! Praised by Katherine Schmidt Patrick, Torrington, Wyoming.