Family reunion sign-up sheet

Fix the date and place first

The sign-up sheet comes second. Pick the date and book the place months ahead, because park pavilions, church halls and rental houses for summer weekends go early. Send a save-the-date to every branch of the family as soon as you have them, six months or more out if people are flying.

Once the date is set, the sheet does the rest of the planning. Put the address and start time in the description. If the reunion is at someone's home, set the sheet to show the place only to people who sign up, so the address isn't on a link that gets forwarded around.

Head count and ages

You need to know who is coming before you buy food, rent tables or order shirts. Add a few questions to the whole sheet:

• "How many are coming from your household?" as a number. This turns the sheet into your RSVP.
• "Names and ages" as a short answer. Ages tell you how many high chairs, kids' meals and teenagers who will want to leave by 3pm.
• "T-shirt sizes" as a short answer, if you're ordering reunion shirts. Ask early, since printers usually need a few weeks.
• "Which days are you coming?" as a choice, for a weekend reunion: Friday, Saturday, or both.
• "Allergies or dietary needs" as a short answer.

The answers stay on your dashboard and in the CSV export. Only you and your co-organizers see them, which is a good place to make one of the cousins a co-organizer.

The food

Count households, not people. Most families bring one dish, and a full tray feeds 10 to 12 people when it sits next to others. For 60 people:

• 4 main dishes, with the grill at the hosts' place for burgers and hot dogs
• 6 sides and 2 salads
• 4 desserts
• 3 drinks lines, with ice
• Paper goods and trash bags, which nobody remembers

Families have their dishes. Before you share the link, add the famous ones as their own lines, such as "Sat lunch: Aunt Dee's ribs", and put her name on it. Everyone can see the ribs are covered, and the next person picks something else.

Food outside in summer

Reunions are mostly summer and mostly outside. The USDA's rule is that perishable food shouldn't sit out longer than two hours, or one hour when the air is above 90°F. Ask whoever brings potato salad, slaw or anything with mayonnaise to bring a cooler, and put the drinks in a different cooler so nobody opens the food one every five minutes.

Jobs for every generation

A reunion runs on jobs as much as food. Give everyone a line they can claim:

• Setup, an hour or two before: tables, chairs, tents and the welcome sign
• Kids' games, for a couple of teenagers or young parents
• The family photo, for whoever has a good camera and a tripod
• A memory table, for the relative with the old albums
• Cleanup, with four people, because it always falls to the hosts otherwise

Older relatives can take the memory table or the welcome table. Teenagers are more willing to run the kids' games when it is their name on a line, not a request from a parent.

Family coming from out of town

If relatives are flying in, add airport pickups as lines, such as "Fri airport pickup, 2pm". Use the carpool sign-up if lots of people are driving from the same city. For hotel blocks, put the hotel, the rate and the booking deadline in the description.

Dibs doesn't take payments. If people chip in for the venue or shirts, collect the money however your family already does, and say how in the description.

A 2027 timeline

For a reunion on Friday, July 23 to Saturday, July 24:

• January: book the place and send the save-the-date.
• Monday, June 7: share the sign-up sheet in the family group chat and by email.
• Monday, June 28: check the open lines and message everyone with what's missing.
• Friday, July 9: close t-shirt sizes so the order goes in.
• Friday, July 16: close sign-ups.
• Wednesday, July 21: Dibs sends the two-day reminder for the Friday cookout on its own.
• Saturday, July 24: the morning reminder goes out. Follow it with a short message: the address, parking and "bring a serving spoon".

A ready list

The starter list above is a Friday cookout and a Saturday reunion for about 60. Paste it into Dibs, change the days to your dates, put the family favorites against their names, and share the link. Relatives sign up from their phone with a name and email, no account and no ads.