We recently celebrated our 10th year graduation from Bolton High School with our first reunion. We have had several questions regarding the reunion planning process, and we would like to take this time to explain.

After some initial research, we discovered we would save thousands of dollars planning the reunion ourselves instead of using a reunion planning organization. Consequently, this meant more affordable tickets for us which we hoped would lead to more participation.
The next step was locating our classmates. We started by using used MySpace, WhitePages, and other internet resources to search for classmates. From the information that we collected, we mailed a letter requesting everyone’s help in locating our missing classmates. In that letter we enclosed a list of people we were unable to find. To our surprise, we received little feedback or replies. We then paid for a People Search on the internet which gave us addresses for about half of the missing classmates. We made a conscious effort to locate everyone, but finding 300 people is not as easy as it may seem. We ask that if you move or change your e-mail address, please keep us in mind and remember to e-mail us your changes. We would hate to lose contact with classmates whom we have already made contact with.

Finally, we estimated one hundred people to attend the event (which is about 50 classmates, and only a little more than 15% of our class).  As our payment deadline approached, we were very disappointed with the lack of participation, but we were not going to let this ruin our reunion and all the planning that went into it. So we made some adjustments and cut some costs (less food/ removing some other features) so we could still have a successful event and WE DID!!! Please keep in mind that several other reunion prices are usually around $100, so we tried to make the cost as low as possible in the beginning and we only charged for the cocktail party even though there were costs involved with planning the entire reunion. In the future, we hope to have more participation so costs will be lower and more people will be able to attend, but we will need people to pay in advance so we can adjust the ticket price according to participation.
From the response of everyone who attended, we felt that they were pleased overall, but the consensus was that they would have liked to have seen more of their classmates. We would like to challenge you to attend our next reunion to make it a bigger success! The more classmates who attend, the better it will be. Please don’t think that you are just one person and no one will notice, because EVERY Bolton Class of ‘98 graduate matters, that is why it is a CLASS REUNION.

We also felt that many people would like to have a 15 year reunion, maybe something a little more informal. In efforts to have a 15 year reunion, we still need money in order to keep you informed, so any donations ($5, $10, $20) would be greatly appreciated. Until we get everyone’s e-mail address, we still have the costs of mailings and maintaining the website. Please be sure to contact us with your e-mail address at boltonclass98@yahoo.com. As of now, we don’t have a lot of extra funds, so we need your e-mail address because that is the best and cheapest way of keeping you informed. We also don’t have the extra funds to keep the website maintained for the next 5 years, so we have created a Facebook group “Bolton High School Class of 1998” where we can keep in touch for now. Even if you were not able to attend, this is a great place to post pictures and info about yourself so other classmates can see what you have been up to. You can also visit www.boltonclass98.shutterfly.com to see pictures from our last reunion. On this website, you can add, share, or order the pictures.