Ordering Apparel for a Reunion: Names, Years and Sizes

Reunion dates are fixed months ahead, so the timing is straightforward: work back from the day through 2-5 working days of tracked UK delivery and around 10-15 working days of production from artwork approval for screen printing or embroidery, remembering that production begins at approval and not at order. The genuinely hard part is the name list, because people's names change over twenty years and an old register is not a reliable source for anything printed permanently on a garment.

Reunions Have A Soft RSVP Problem

Nobody commits early to a reunion. Interest is high, attendance is uncertain, and a meaningful number of people decide in the final fortnight. That is survivable for a generic printed hoodie and a serious problem for personalised ones, since each late confirmation is an individual named item you cannot simply pull from a stack of spares.

Split the order in your head. The shared design, the class year, the crest, the group graphic, can be produced to a forecast with sensible spare sizes. The personalised layer needs a hard deadline, published clearly, sitting ahead of your artwork approval date. Say plainly that names can only be included for those who confirm by that date, and offer late confirmations an unnamed version.

Names Change, And That Is The Trap

This is the reunion-specific failure. Someone married and took a different surname. Someone married, then divorced, and went back. Someone has used a shortened form for thirty years and would find their full name on a hoodie faintly absurd. Someone has changed their name for personal reasons and will not want the old one printed at all, and pulling it off a class list would be a genuinely painful thing to do to them.

So do not transcribe from a register. Ask each person, in writing, exactly how they want their name to appear, and print that. If the group wants the nostalgia of old names, the safe pattern is current name with the old one shown as an optional secondary line that each person opts into. It is one extra column on the form and it avoids every version of this going wrong.

• Collect names via a form where each person types their own preferred version.
• Offer a maiden or former name as an opt-in second line, never as an assumption.
• Set the personalisation deadline earlier than the RSVP deadline and publish both.
• Ask for a current size rather than working from anyone's memory of the old team kit.
• Order unnamed spares in middle sizes for the people who decide at the last minute.

Sizing People Twenty Years On

The one thing you can be sure of is that nobody is the size they were. Send the size guide with the name form and make size a required field. Resist any temptation to work from old squad lists or photographs. If someone does not reply, put them in a large. Reunion garments are usually hoodies or sweatshirts worn over other clothes, so a generous fit is the right default and a slim one is a mistake.

The Class Of Design, And Its Shelf Life

A year on the chest is fine here, unlike most event kit, because the year is the point. It is the shared identity, not a timestamp on a one-off occasion. What does date badly is the reunion year itself. Printing the leaving year means the garment stays meaningful at every future gathering, whereas printing the reunion year makes it a souvenir of one evening. If you want both, put the leaving year large on the front and the reunion year small, somewhere quiet, on a sleeve.

“"Ask people how they want their name printed. The register you are working from was accurate in a different decade."”

Method: Shared Layer, Personal Layer

The shared element is printed the same way across the whole run. Screen printing suits a bold, limited-colour year or crest and is the best value as quantities rise, with a setup cost per colour. Embroidery gives a more considered, premium look and holds up for years, though fine detail and small text need simplifying to stitch cleanly. Names are a separate operation using vinyl, applied per item, which is what makes individual personalisation possible in the first place. Vinyl prints exactly what is on the approved list, so the list is the thing to check twice.

Minimums, Discounts And Getting It Ordered

Velocity Wear works from a 20-piece minimum per order with sizes mixed freely, and bulk discounts reach up to around 40% as quantities rise, so a single consolidated run beats collecting orders in dribs and drabs. Take payment before you order, not after, because chasing money for a personalised garment somebody has decided they no longer want is a thankless job. Lay the design out in the free Design Studio to see how the year and names sit on the garment, and use the instant price calculator to work out what to charge per head.