A dropout after the draw is not the end of the exchange. With a few targeted moves, you can keep most assignments intact and re-route just the affected pair. Here is the playbook. The instinct to redraw the whole group is almost always wrong — it punishes the players who already showed up by erasing the matches they may have started shopping for, and it amplifies a one-person problem into a twenty-person one.
Four moves to handle a clean dropout
Identify the two affected pairs
The dropout matters in two roles: as a giver and as a receiver. They were going to gift someone, and someone was going to gift them. Identify both. With Cuchumbo, the assignments stay sealed even from you — the affected players see only their own page change, and the rest of the group is unaware anything shifted.
Reshake to absorb the dropout, not redraw the whole group
A reshake re-routes only the assignments that touched the dropout. The other pairs stay exactly as they were. Players who already opened their match keep that match. The seal stays mostly intact — just the impacted pair changes hands. This works the same whether you're running a Secret Santa at a small office or a forty-person family draw.
Tell the affected players, not the whole group
Only two people experience a real change: the dropout's giftee and their giver. Talk to them directly, explain the new pairing, and let the rest of the group keep going as if nothing happened. Mass announcements amplify a problem that should stay narrow, and they accidentally invite further dropouts by signalling that the exchange is wobbling.
Don't refund the dropout's gift — let them keep it
If the person who dropped out had already bought a gift, the cleanest move is to let them keep it (or pass it on outside the exchange). Asking them to mail an unsent gift to a third party adds friction to a situation they're already trying to exit gracefully. Handmade gifts are the one exception — most makers prefer the piece travel to its intended hands rather than sit unused.
When to redraw the whole group
If two or more people drop out at once, or if the group is small enough that a single dropout creates an awkward triangle, a full redraw may be cleaner than a reshake. Cuchumbo lets you do either — reshake for one or two losses, repeat for a fresh round if the original draw is no longer workable.
Reshake handles dropouts in seconds
On the Cuchumbo organizer page, the Reshake button re-routes the affected assignments and leaves the rest sealed. One click, the impacted players see their new match, the seal holds for everyone else, and no account or sign-in is needed for any of it. Free, private, no residue.