Pick a reunion date and place when the family is scattered

Four households, two candidate weekends, one cabin hold. Send the comparison and ask the person whose calendar actually blocks the date — not a twenty-person poll.

2 min read

The cabin will hold a weekend until Friday. One weekend conflicts with your cousin's move. The other conflicts with the only flights your uncle said he could book. The family chat has a poll with seven emoji and no record of the cabin's cancellation fee.

Send the two weekends. Ask the person who can actually kill one.

Date and place as one closed choice

Ask for a decision: weekend of the 6th at the lake cabin, or weekend of the 13th at the same cabin, by Thursday. If the place is still open, that is a second decision — do not smuggle "or maybe a hotel" into the first ask unless you mean to reopen the place.

Write the comparison:

  • each weekend's start and end
  • cabin cost and the Friday hold
  • known conflicts (the move, the flights)
  • who is already a yes, as stated by them, not as your hope

Respect the reader's time. They are not voting on a feeling. They are saying whether their household can be in one place on two dates. A sufficient reply is "6th" or "neither, here is the one weekend we can do."

Leave the reunion-as-healing essay in the session. The briefing is logistics.

Most of them are just email

They do not need an account. The uncle who still prints emails will open a link. The cousin who already uses RelayLink needs an accepted contact before you can send. Do not make the whole family sign up to pick a weekend.

You approve every send. The session has the sentence about who never comes and who always leaves early. That sentence stays.

Do not attach the cabin PDF. Cost, hold, cancellation line. If they want the listing, they ask.

One veto, not a twenty-person poll

The poll already failed. It asked everyone for everything and recorded nothing. Send the closed choice to the person whose "no" changes the hold. FYI the others once the page exists, so they are not discovering the cabin in a joke thread.

If you need three yeses, you are running three decisions. Say that to yourself before you write one message with three names in the to-line and a vague "thoughts?"

A reply is how you know the person you asked has it. A fetched link is not a read. You will not see whether they have told their kids. When the hold is sitting in a session and the poll is still emoji, connect your assistant and send the two weekends as a decision.

Frequently asked questions

Who should receive the decision briefing?
The person whose calendar or budget can kill the weekend. Everyone else can get a short FYI once the options are on a page.
Do relatives need RelayLink?
No. Email and a link are enough. If someone already has an account, you need an accepted contact with that person first.
What if three people all have to say yes?
Send the same closed choice to each, separately, or accept that you are running three decisions. One message with three vetoes is how nobody answers.