Hi Kelley,
I am planning a 15th class reunion and we are wondering what are some of the mementos we can give our fellow classmates?
karla and bessie
Hmm. It seems to me that mementos fall into two basic camps: the commercially easy but relatively impersonal, and the lots-of-work-for-you but more personal. I suppose it depends on how much you like your class and whether you really want to (or have the time to) do a bunch of work just to give them a gift.
I’ve been to reunions where the main mementos were T-shirts and/or baseball caps. Neither of these excited me particularly, but they certainly aren’t bad in any way. Deciding what design to put on them can be fun, and they are easy to get produced. There are also things like mugs, calendars, etc. that can be produced with photos or text. On the work-your-ass-off side of the scale are the customized items – music, photo albums or montages, reunion books. The CDs I made took me at least 150 hours of planning, programming, duplication, and graphic design time, and I would assume that other customized items would require a similar commitment.
I can imagine lots of things that might be fun to do, but it’s not clear to me how feasible they are. Given time, you could project-manage a huge collaborative memento – everyone (who wants to) contributing a message to the class, or a piece of art, or a photo they took, that embodies their experience at school.
My take is that mementos, whether mass-produced or personally crafted, should be A) something that people can actually interact with (read, drink from, laugh and wonder over, or use in their everday world), and B) something that will reconnect them with their school experience. Giving them an object with the school’s name tastefully silkscreened on it does not, in my opinion, accomplish this: they already know the name of the school, after all. But something with a picture, or a text memory, or a special class motto, might do the trick. Mileage varies, as always.
You will have to pay for this stuff up front and collect the cost as part of what you charge each person to attend the reunion, unless you are fortunate enough to have a school budget already available for such things. So be warned: stuff is expensive (grin). If you want to make sure everyone in your class gets a memento, and not just those at the reunion, then the people who come to the reunion pretty much end up covering the cost of the mementos (and shipping) for those who don’t. Charge accordingly.
You haven’t said if this is a high school or college reunion, or anything about your class. I’d be interested in hearing more: where did you go to school, and what was it like? Are you happy about being in charge of this event? (I can imagine it being equal parts fun and nightmare, myself.) What are you hoping for?
Good luck with it. I hope you have a blast.