Turning a Family Reunion Into a Connected Event Experience
Family Reunion 2026
Event Experience / Registration and Payments / Family Engagement
A SYNC-owned build by SYNC Digital Agency.
The challenge
When you’re planning a family reunion, “Who’s coming?” is only the first question. You also need to know who’s registered under each household, what they ordered, what they owe, and whether they know where to be on Saturday morning. Families have questions of their own, and everyone needs answers they can find again.
For the 2026 Bryant, Longstreet, and Young family reunion in Detroit, we wanted to make those details easier to manage while giving relatives more ways to connect before and during the weekend.
How we designed it
We started with the household. From there, we mapped what a family needed to do before arriving, what they needed to find during the weekend, and how they could contribute to the reunion itself.
The app brought household lookup, registration, meal and T-shirt selections, calculated totals, payments, and confirmations into one experience. It also gave attendees a place to find hotel and travel details, the weekend agenda, activities, FAQs, and event updates.
The experience in practice
- Sign up
- View agenda
- Register
- Attend
The demo registration view connects package choices, household details and a family total.
What it gave each side
Organizers
For organizers, the hub gave registration, selections, payments, and communications a shared home. That made it easier to coordinate the details that determine whether an event runs smoothly.
Families
For families, there was one place to register, see what they’d selected, and find out what was happening next. Relatives could also contribute through family profiles, Life & Legacy submissions, genealogy, and a shared playlist.
What made it different
The same app that handled practical details gave relatives a way to help tell the family’s story. A household could register and pay, then come back to learn how the three branches connected or contribute something of its own. Those were two different reasons to use the app, and both mattered to the reunion.
The outcome
The Detroit reunion welcomed 60 participants from July 31 to August 2, 2026. The hub supported the logistics and gave relatives ways to participate in the family history that was shared during the weekend. We built it for our own family, which gave us the opportunity to design the experience and see how it fit into the event itself.
By July 24, 2026, the organizer reported approximately $2,200 in registration payments and $2,500 in donated goods and services, including food and event equipment. These pre-event reported figures describe cash payments and in-kind support separately.
Additional project assets
