Lots of classmates are saying YES, indicating they are planning to attend the reunion, but few are paying online.
Have I set something up wrong?
We need money now to secure hall/catering, etc.
Suggestions?

You should probably send e-mails to those who signed up for the reunion but forgot to add a reunion ticket to their shopping cart.

There is an item on the task list where shopping cart items can be REQUIRED. This feature isn't completed yet, but it is on the way.

This is a common problem when running a Reunion. Everyone waits until the last minute. Then you have the other people who will not commit until they know who is going. Just keep moving forward.

One thing I have heard of classes doing is sending out a "Email The Class" saying that "The current price is $25.00 per ticket, but on March 15th, the ticket price will be $30.00".

So, those that want to save $5.00 per ticket can order early to get the discount.

Or say the first 20 people who pay will be entered in a drawing to get "Dinner for two (or some other donated prize.)" or "1/2 of their ticket price refunded", or something else like that.

We had a deadline last year and about 3 weeks before we had less than 200 paid. In the last 3 weeks, we have about 500 pay and still people begging to pay up until the very end.

People do wait to the last minute and it is very hard to accurately plan the reunion unless you have a deadline date about 60 days prior to the reunion

Doug,

You're not alone on procrastinating classmates. I send an email blast out 2 times a month. That day I usually get over 50 people log into the site and maybe 1 will register. I have a page with a list of those who have paid and leave it up for a week, then remove it for a week. It doesn't matter. I just do not like the option under the Classmate Profiles page which has the link of Attending. This defeats the purpose of hiding a list and currently there is no way to shut it off (other than unchecking that option in each classmate's profile who has registered). So I just display a better formatted page with names. We do have a payment increase so I'm sure we will see a flood of registrations the day before the price increases. I have also emailed everyone that the hall will not take "at the door" people to dicourage those who don't care about any extra cost for not registering early. Since we won't turn anyone away I will send an email the final week of registering and state I convinced the hall to allow this (most can accomodate 5-10% above your final count). I will also include in that email that there will be a $10 facility charge for those who wish to skip our banquet dinner and just join us for the cash bar - this should discourage those penny pinchers who think they will skip any cost and join in for free. Just keep plugging away and be persistant at getting them to register.