Making Your Family Reunion Booklet

If you've wrapped up your t-shirt orders as mentioned in the previous article this would be a good time to complete your genealogy presentation for your family reunion keepsake booklet. One of our earlier reunion preparation reminders involved collecting photos, stories, genealogy research and starting on your genealogy presentation. These will go in your family reunion keepsake booklet. 

1. Photos
2. Family History
3. Attendee Contact Info
4. Family Business
5. In Memoriam

Working With Family Photos

Ideal photos for the keepsake booklet are group photos taken from the previous reunion even. Others may include vintage pics, new born pics, wedding pics, retirement and anniversary pics, a well as photos taken at graduation and other honorary events including the elders of the tribe.

You will want to do one of two things with your photos.
1. Scan old photos into your computer
2. Take a picture of the photo and import them to your computer.

Now that your photos are on your computer use your photo editing tools to crop (cut-around) the images into a perfect square.

Family History 

Next, from your family history files put together two paragraphs of information about your ancestry from the earliest records available. 

Include full first names, middle and surnames of both father and mother, marriage dates, education, trades and employment, residents, migration and births leading up to the eldest living family member.
http://family-reunion-planner.fimark.net/family_reunion_booklet.html 

Attendee Registration Roster/Database

The Family Reunion Planner Social web app includes the Attendee Registration Roster, a part of the family reunion spreadsheet. This Roster is a database for keeping attendee information such as contact information, returned survey data and t-shirt orders by person and household. You can share the database with multiple family members for real-time editing and updating. Allowing others access to the database helps improve the accuracy and expedite updates in a more timely manner much like a wiki-project. 

Family Business 

As you put together your attendee registration database include information regarding the various businesses owned by family members including those who sell Cosmetic products, Insurance, Real Estate, Clothing, Cars, Travel Discounts, Arts and Crafts, Event Venues and such. Family members may wish to purchase a space or whole page in the booklet to provide more details regarding the business. Proceeds go to the event or committee treasury. Use the blank page found in the booklet template for adding additional business pages.

In Memoriam

The In Memoriam section can include information from the obituary of recently deceased elders and other family members. Some like to add excerpts from a bio as well as a poem or two in this section.
http://family-reunion-planner.fimark.net/family_reunion_poems.html

Putting together your family reunion keepsake booklet can be one of the most rewarding projects associated with the event, so remember to get the family involved.

Happy Family Reunion Planning!

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