Finding Enough Relatives For a Reunion
Posted on May 30, 2008
Filed Under Finding Family |
Summer, the perfect time for barbecues, dinner parties, and gatherings of all types, has arrived. Mother nature has provided you with a great opportunity to get off your ass and set up that family reunion you’ve been thinking about for so long. Act on it! It’s easier than ever to contact long lost relatives for a rousing get-together, so don’t waste anymore time and hop to it! Grilled corn on the cob, juicy burgers, drunken uncles, and massive disorganized volleyball matches await.
Probably the main thing stopping us from planning a family reunion is the crazy amount of work it usually entails. And true, back in the day, before cell phones and the Internet, getting a huge group of people together in one place was an enormous undertaking. You’d have to dust off the old address book, squint your eyes to read Grandpa’s illegible chicken scratch, and try to remember if Aunt Fran still hated Cousin Jessica’s living guts. Ha! People’d have to fly in from all over the country, so planning a date that worked for everyone was nearly impossible. Plus, there was no quick way of checking dates with people, so there was no way to get feedback or instant RSVPs. You’d be waiting by the mailbox for weeks on end, only to find out that the dates you picked wouldn’t work for most people. Ugh! And if by some stretch of luck you arrived at a suitable date, you still had to plan seating arrangements to accommodate the twisted, cannibalistic relationships most large families feature. Don’t put Uncle Frank within arm’s length of the bar or he’ll be pantsless by noon. And Aunt Livvy? Watch her closely or she’ll get frisky with the busboy. You have enough family scandals to deal with already.
All that’s in the past, though. Well, you’ll still have to deal with the quirky personalities that any family has, but you have a whole host of powerful online tools to make the ordeal way easier. Worried about invitations and getting responses back in time to get the right date set up? Use eVite. eVite allows you to send invitations to events through emails, and recipients can respond in real time. That way, if tons of people are responding in the negative, you can react quickly enough and figure out a date that works for everyone.
What about actually finding all those people? Tons of relatives (especially the older ones) probably don’t even have email access or cell phones. Since these are the people you probably haven’t seen in years, they need to be there, no questions asked. All those younger, more-in-tune-with-the-’net won’t be a problem to dig up; heck, you’re probably already in contact with them. And chances are that old address book you may still have is old and outdated — if you can even read it! My friend, your only choice is to try an online people search engine.
People search engines allow you to find someone, anyone really, by accessing public government records. The very same records that a professional private eye would use to find a criminal on the lam can be accessed by you with the touch of a button. So these engines undoubtedly work, and they work well. You just type in the last name (which I’m sure you have, seeing as how it’s a family reunion!) and marriage, divorce, criminal, even death (God forbid) records will pop up for everyone with that name. It goes without saying, of course, that addressess and phone numbers will be available too. Searches can be divided by city and state for more narrow results. You’re not being intrusive, either; these records are public, meaning they’re available to anyone and everyone.
So get on it! Try Public Records Now or Private Eye and planning a family reunion will become the easiest thing in the world.
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Public Records Now helped me find my mom’s brother, and they hadn’t seen each other in 25+ years!!
i didn’t even know sites like this existed.
We are having a family reunion in August, and that site you recommended just helped me finally find my mother’s brother! THanks.