Assemble a committee. While there are as many components as a wedding, the truth is, it is not your wedding. So your best friend in the scenario will be to delegate. Assemble a committee. Preferably at least seven people. This will be enough to place one person in charge of each major aspect. Call, write, beg, plead and cajole until you have your group. Then assign each person their job.
Pick a date. This is something that can be done with the committee, before you assemble the committee or on your own. Work with the college to determine a date. You want to make sure that there are no other major functions being held when you were thinking of planning it. Another good idea is to plan your reunion around 3-day weekends to give people ample time to travel. Memorial Day, Columbus Day and even Thanksgiving are popular times to hold both High School and College reunions. Once you pick your day you can go onto the next step.
Hire vendors. Now that the day is set, you along with the person you delegated from the committee can seek vendors. Estimate how many people you think will attend based on the number of people in your class and past attendance. College reunions tend to get less of a gathering percentage-wise than high school gatherings. This is due to the fact that colleges are usually much larger. Figure 30 percent of your class will attend and about half of those people will bring a date. But again, if a previous class reunion had more people, that will be a better estimate. Now procure quotes from vendors for food, beverages, music, entertainment, venue and more. Make your decision based on budget and quality. Keep in mind you want the cost of a reunion to be equivalent to going out to a nice dinner. It can be a bit pricey, but not too expensive, otherwise people will not want to attend. $75 to $100 per person depending on the length is probably a good cap which will help give you a great turnout. Be sure that as you hire each vendor, you receive contracts with explicit terms of the services to be rendered, payment schedule and cancellation policy.
Send out invites. The cheapest way to do this is through evite.com. If you want to use fancy stores like Papyrus or The Paper source (both of which have websites) you can make high quality invites. Be sure to include the usuals, like date, time and place, but also a deadline far in advance of when they need to submit payment by and where. As the host of the college reunion, you are like the CEO and CFO of a company. It's probably best if you handle the money and oversee the contracts. That way you know exactly where you stand at all times and won't have to chase people for the important answers.
Follow-up. If people have not responded to the invites, try contacting them again either via phone or email to make sure the invite got to them. Also, as you make the final vendor payments, be sure to review the terms of the contract with each. That way there will be no surprises on the big day.
Relax and enjoy! It's your college reunion too. When the big day comes oversee the vendors, make sure they are doing their job, but most importantly catch up with old friends. You worked hard, you should enjoy it. Be sure to thank people who helped plan the reunion on your committee. Also, as host, greet people, thank them for coming and keep them updated on the night's events! Congratulations, you have learned how to host a college reunion!