Black family reunions

The reunion is a tradition.
Give it the tools it deserves.

Your family reunion is not a picnic. It is an institution. It has a committee, a rotation, a cookout that people fly across the country for, and a matriarch whose name holds it all together. Grove was built for exactly that kind of gathering.

Start planning your reunion

The committee does the real work.
Grove gives it a real system.

Every family reunion runs on a committee. There is someone handling the money, someone booking the park, someone coordinating the t-shirts, and someone making sure the elders have shade and chairs. But most of the time, the committee is operating on group texts and handwritten lists. Grove gives the committee a shared workspace where tasks are assigned, budgets are visible, and nothing falls through the cracks because somebody changed their phone number.

Role assignments

Treasurer, food coordinator, activities chair, registration lead. Assign roles so everyone knows their lane and the work stays balanced.

Shared task board

Every task has an owner and a deadline. The committee sees what is done and what is still open without asking in the group chat.

Budget transparency

The treasurer posts the budget, the committee tracks expenses, and every branch can see where the money is going. No guesswork.

Your family has branches. Grove knows that.

The Williams side. The Jackson line. Grandma Lucille's people. Black family reunions are organized by branches, and those branches are how the cookout is staffed, how the t-shirt count is tallied, and how the family Olympics teams are drawn. Grove lets you define your branches once, and everything else follows: RSVP counts by branch, communication channels for each side, and a running record of who belongs where.

Branch RSVP tracking

See how many people are coming from each branch. The Atlanta side has 34 confirmed. The Chicago line has 12 and counting.

Branch channels

Each branch gets its own space to coordinate. The Houston crew can organize their carpool without flooding the main thread.

Family Olympics by branch

Tug-of-war, relay races, trivia, spades tournament. Track scores by branch with a live leaderboard that keeps the competition honest.

Branch t-shirt counts

Collect sizes by branch so the t-shirt coordinator has an accurate count before placing the order. No more guessing.

The cookout is not optional.
The potluck board keeps it covered.

Somebody is bringing the ribs. Somebody else has the banana pudding. Aunt Deb always does the potato salad. But without a system, you end up with six trays of baked beans and no cups. Grove's potluck board lets people claim what they are bringing, organized by category. The food coordinator sees the full picture and can fill the gaps before the reunion, not during it.

The matriarch started this.
Her story should live somewhere permanent.

In a lot of Black families, the reunion exists because one person decided to hold the family together. She picked the park. She kept the phone tree. She cooked for 80 people and made it look easy. When that person is gone, the family feels it. Grove's Memory Wall and voice story features let you capture those voices while they are still here. Record the matriarch telling the story of how the reunion started. Upload the photos from 1987. Build an ancestor wall that honors the people who came before.

Voice stories

Record audio directly from a phone. Capture Big Mama telling the family origin story in her own words, not someone else's summary.

Ancestor wall

Photos and names of those who have passed. Displayed during the reunion and preserved in the capsule for every year after.

The family historian

Every family has one. Give them a real archive to work with instead of a shoebox of photos and a spiral notebook.

From Mississippi to Chicago to everywhere else.

A lot of Black family reunions are rooted in the Great Migration. The family left the South, scattered across the country, and the reunion became the one time a year everyone came back together. Grove's branch structure mirrors that geography. You can see where the family started, where everyone ended up, and how the branches formed along the way. The reunion is not just a party. It is a homecoming. And the tools should understand that.

Yes, there is a t-shirt. And it matters.

The family reunion t-shirt is not merch. It is a marker. It says you were there. It says you belong. Grove lets you collect sizes during registration, track orders by branch, and coordinate the design process with your committee. Pre-orders can be tied to RSVP payments so the t-shirt coordinator has a clean count before going to print.

The reunion starts at church. Grove gets that.

For many families, the reunion weekend begins with a Sunday service. The family fills a whole section. There is a program, a family prayer, and sometimes a memorial moment for those who passed since the last gathering. Grove's schedule builder lets you block out the service, the cookout, the family meeting, and the activities so everyone knows where to be and when. The day-of page keeps the whole weekend on track.

After the reunion, the record lives on.

The photos. The group shot. The video of the step show. The list of who was there. The budget breakdown. Grove packages all of it into a capsule that the family can revisit any time. Next year's committee gets the notes, the contacts, and the lessons learned. The family historian gets a real archive. And the next generation gets proof that this family shows up for each other, every single year.

Your family reunion is bigger than a group chat.

Free to start. No credit card. Set up the committee, the branches, and the cookout in under ten minutes.