We built this because
of a funeral.
Not the most obvious origin story for a reunion platform. But the honest one.
My cousin Brady died.
He was young. It was sudden. And when the family gathered for his funeral, something happened that I haven't been able to stop thinking about since.
I met cousins I didn't know I had.
Not distant cousins. Close ones. People who shared my blood, my grandmother's name, the same family stories I grew up hearing - and I had never been in the same room with them. We were standing at a funeral together for someone we both loved and we were strangers to each other.
That's not a logistics problem. That's a loss.
It happened because the family had no structure for staying connected between the moments that forced us together. No place to be. No way for one side to know what the other side was doing. The group chat died after the last reunion. The spreadsheet got lost. The person who used to organize everything burned out and passed the invisible burden to someone who didn't know where to start.
So people drifted. Branches separated. Cousins became strangers.
Grove exists because that shouldn't happen. Because the family shouldn't have to wait for someone to die to find each other. Because the reunion - the actual event of the whole family being in the same place - is just one weekend. But the family is every day.
We built Grove for the person doing the work of keeping the family together. And we built it for the cousin who showed up to a funeral and met people they should have known their whole life.
We're not going to get Brady back. But we can build something that makes sure the family doesn't lose each other again.
What we believe
Reunions are underrated.
Getting 40 or 400 people to the same place, from different cities, different branches of a family that's been growing for decades - that's a logistical achievement and a small miracle. The tools should match the effort.
The organizer carries the whole thing.
RSVPs, payments, venue, lodging, schedule, potluck, texts from every direction. Most of that work is invisible. Grove's job is to make it trackable, manageable, and worth doing again next year - and to make sure whoever runs it next doesn't have to start from nothing.
Family memory is fragile.
Photos get lost. Stories get forgotten. The cousin who knew all the names passes away and takes half the history with her. The family historian's recipes and documents disappear when she does. Preservation isn't an afterthought - it's the reason the reunion matters ten years from now.
The family is bigger than any one event.
A reunion is one weekend. The family is every day between those weekends - the birthdays, the decisions, the questions, the branches growing in cities nobody else knows about. Grove stays open after the weekend ends. The community stays warm. The archive keeps growing. The next reunion starts where the last one left off.
On the day of, the technology should disappear.
What's real is the family. The platform is just the scaffolding.
There are people in your family
you haven't met yet.
We know this because of how Grove works. When families come onto the platform and start building their roster, the gaps become visible. A branch with two people confirmed when history says there should be twelve. A name mentioned during identity capture that doesn't match anyone on the roster. A whole line of cousins that one side of the family didn't know existed.
Grove surfaces those gaps. It asks the people who are here if they know the people who aren't. It makes it possible for the family to find itself - not just at the reunion, but year-round, as people join, contribute, and connect.
The family graph grows every time someone RSVPs. Every time someone says "my mother is Denise Wilmer" or uploads a GEDCOM file from their Ancestry research. Every time the organizer confirms a relationship. Over time, Grove knows your family better than any single person in it - and it shares that knowledge back to the family in the form of connections they didn't know to make.
We built this because of what happened at Brady's funeral. And we're building it so it doesn't have to happen to your family.
Built to last.
68
routes
120
database tables
60
email templates
14
planning sections
Grove adapts to how your group works - family reunions, class reunions, military units, church gatherings, Greek chapters, college alumni, neighborhood events. The language, defaults, and features adjust when you set up your group type. It's a full-stack product. We built it that way on purpose. Patchwork tools produce patchwork experiences.
And it gets more useful every year. The second reunion starts where the first one ended. The third starts where the second did. The roster, the branches, the photos, the archive, the hosting notes - all of it carries forward. Over time, Grove knows your family's reunion history better than any spreadsheet ever could.
Don't lose your people.
Someone in your family is carrying the weight of the next reunion right now. Give them something that makes it worth doing again next year - and something that makes sure the family doesn't have to meet as strangers at the next funeral.
Start planning for freeNo credit card required. Takes about 9 minutes to set up.