Organizing a class reunion? For your five, ten, twenty, or fiftieth class reunions—and all the ones in between—you gather together with former classmates. These are people you haven’t seen in years, and you may be anxious about the event. You want it to go off well—to be a great party, and also a great chance to catch up and share life stories.

Trying to think of some way to tie the whole thing together? Some way to start the reunion off on the right foot? Some way to send everyone home at the end with a token of the time you’ve spent together? Are you working on a budget?

One great, affordable idea for class reunions is to order custom t-shirts for the event. Whether you are planning a reunion for high school, college, trade school, or any other type of group learning experience (summer camp, dance school, etc.), you can surprise the guests with matching t-shirts to commemorate the occasion in the future.

If you’ve got a big class, you probably want to make the t-shirts matching—trying to personalize t-shirts for 200 people might be too much of a headache to think about! So, for a large group, think about unifying phrases and images that you could include on the t-shirts. What would grab everyone’s attention and jog everyone’s memories? The standard “Class of 2008” is always a great thing to include on the t-shirt. You also should include the name of the school, and perhaps the date and location of the reunion. Think about the t-shirt as an entry into a diary, or a scrapbook. Include information that will remind the wearers of the reunion—and maybe even his or her time at school—whenever they wear it in the future. You could include school mascots, quotes, song lyrics, or perhaps facts about the years you were in school together: what was happening in 1978? What were the current events, who was the president, what were the popular movies and songs? These are things that can remind the reuniting class of things that bound them together back in school, and now bind them together now as shared memories.

If the class is smaller, you can have some fun with personalizing the t-shirts, either for individuals or groups. One idea is to keep the fronts of the t-shirts uniform—this way, there is a common thread running through the reunion for everyone who’s wearing them. On the other hand, though, you could perhaps personalize the front of the t-shirts and use them as nametags, with each person’s name on the front of their shirt so everyone knows who they are. Consider putting the last name of each guest on the back of the t-shirt, as if it were a sports jersey. A funny idea for the fronts or backs of the t-shirts would be to include each person’s yearbook picture from the graduating year. Potentially embarrassing: but what reunion isn’t?

Having t-shirts as party favors for your class reunion is a great way to start the event off with a laugh, and to unify your classmates as they reminisce and reconnect.