Sibling Revelry

Every year, more than 200,000 American families gather for reunions, from small nuclear-family affairs to huge roundups of distant relatives. Designated planners should know there is help out there, even if they’re not getting it from their relatives. Below, a list of resources to help ensure that the gang’s all there.

Cast a Wide Net: Family-Reunion.com (www.family-reunion.com), billed as “the Web’s most popular family reunion planning site,” offers articles on each phase of planning, if you don’t mind taking advice from someone named Mr. Spiffy. The site posts reunion announcements and provides an archive of reunion locations and a free newsletter. It also has planning software, priced at $29.95.

For tracking down relatives or researching your ancestry, Cindi’s List of Genealogy Sites (www.Cyndi’sList.com) cross-references more than 115,000 links. Genealogy.com (www.genealogy.com) allows users to create a family tree, search for missing branches of the family and share information with other relatives. Some resources are subscription-based. MyFamily.com (www.myfamily.com) enables reunion coordinators to create a private family site where the clan can access reunion information. Some resources are subscription-based.

Read the Fine Print: Reunions Magazine is a quarterly publication devoted to helping people organize all types of get-togethers (family, class and military). The magazine’s Web site, www.reunionsmag.com, also offers advice and information. Subscriptions are $22 per year. Reunions Magazine, P.O. Box 11727, Milwaukee, Wis. 53211-0727; (800) 373-7933 or fax (414) 263-6331.

Reunions Magazine editor Edith Wagner has compiled “The Family Reunion Sourcebook” (Lowell House, $16.95), offering planning advice for everything from small family gatherings to major events.

Tom Ninkovich, a self-described “reunion anthropologist,” interviewed 3,000 reunion planners for “The Family Reunion Handbook: A Complete Guide for Reunion Planners” (Reunion Research, $14.95). The first three chapters are available free on www.reuniontips.com, which also features tips and links.

A Family Favorite: Can’t decide on your location? You might consider one of America’s most popular reunion destinations: the YMCA of the Rockies in Colorado. Reunions are such a big part of its business that it provides planning workbooks for coordinators. It hosts about 800 family gatherings a year at two facilities--the 5,100-acre Snow Mountain Ranch and the 860-acre Estes Park Center. Accommodations include campsites, cabins with kitchen facilities or hotel-style rooms in the main lodges. The centers are open year-round with such diversions as arts and crafts, rock climbing, fishing, river rafting, horseback riding, line dancing, even special ice-breaking activities to get things off on the right foot.

Snow Mountain Ranch/YMCA, P.O. Box 169, Winter Park, Colo., 80482; reservations (970) 887-2152 or (303) 443-4743. Estes Park Center/YMCA, 2515 Tunnel Road, Estes Park, Colo., 80511; reservations (970) 586-3341 or (303) 448-1616; www.ymcarockies.org (a 10-minute video tour is available).