<p>Is it meet for lunch or dinner? Go over to yours or their home for dinner? Go to a big get together party with a theme like superbowl ,holiday party, neighborhood get together?
Also do you prefer a text, phone call, email, card in the mail?</p>
<p>Doesn’t matter. We do all of the above with our friends. No real preference. </p>
<p>We do all. We have friends (two couples) who we get together with regularly for dinner, mostly going out to eat. We used to do it at home (and occasionally still do) but we prefer to go out now. I did a Christmas party for many years for a large group of friends then one of those friends took it over one year saying that I’d done it for long enough (in the nice way). She still does it and this year’s is next Saturday. This is a group, probably between 15 and 20 couples, that have known each other since our kids’ nursery school days, almost 30 years. Our kids went all through school together, for the most part. The wives/moms are extremely close, and the husbands/dads are close, within smaller groups who golf, play squash, travel, volunteer together. The ladies got together for many years for a weekend at one friend’s cottage, expanding the time as the kids got older. That cottage is now sold so we did one last big group at our place down south, and now it’s just a smaller group who comes each year.</p>
<p>It’s usually the women who organize the couple get-togethers. The men do their own planning for their events. Almost all is done through email.</p>
<p>Last night we had friends over. After eating dinner, we sat in our outdoor hot tub for an hour and a half. It was the wife’s first time to sit in an outdoor tub, and she loved it.</p>
<p>Yeah, if I waited for men to arrange the get-togethers, they would never happen.</p>
<p>We have several distinct groups of friends, and our customary way of getting together is to have dinner at someone’s house. I personally love to cook and entertain, so I don’t find this way burdensome at all. IME, going out to dinner gets very expensive very quickly, and requires that you (a) sit still for the entire dinner, and (b) only see each other for two or so hours, and © only sit next to the same two people for the entire event. Not lively enough for me. </p>
<p>One of the couples hosts a Super Bowl party and another hosts a New Year’s Eve party every year. I also have breakfast with one group of women on the first Saturday of every month.</p>
<p>Email is the usual way we correspond, which seems to suit us all.</p>
<p>easiest to do restaurant dinners but the most fun is always in the home</p>
<p>BTW, with one of our groups, we’ve recently started to add charades to our evenings. Hilarious fun. </p>
<p>We almost always eat out…arrangements made via email. Have friends over for dinner at the house perhaps once a year. Entertained at home very much more frequently when kids were living at home…didn’t have the funds then to eat out as much…now don’t have the will to entertain at home!!</p>
<p>Over the years, we’ve done a range–meals at restaurants, houses, and lots of grad from college parties. It’s the women that do the contacting. </p>
<p>In my household before my divorce, it was just the opposite – my ex organized the dinner parties, constantly. It was exhausting. One thing I do miss is that he used to have Friday night “open house” style dinners for whoever was around in our particular group of friends. He’d cook big batches of pasta or grill large quantities of chicken and veggies for whoever showed up. It retrospect it was nice but I used to complain about the constant entertaining. </p>
<p>We eat out mostly, followed by potluck dessert at home so we can continue our conversations.</p>
<p>I have some close childhood friends ( 4 of us) that live in the same state as me. We get together several times of year. Each drives several hours to meet at a central location in a small, who the heck knows where, village. We found a hotel that serves lunch and allows usu to sit, drink wine (not too much) and talk for hours. We love these times together. Sometimes we do other things. A few years ago we went white water rafting. We want to do a wine tour one weekend. But finding a weekend we are all available is difficult.</p>
<p>We have additional childhood friends that live further away, ie across country. We all get together every few years for an overnight. There are 8 of us. So finding a time acceptable to all is very difficult.</p>
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<p>I would love to do this. How do you get it started??</p>
<p>I like the lack of fuss of eating out, but there’s one couple who I love dearly, but I really hate eating out with them because he doesn’t like anything. (At home he just has salad for dinner.) We are going out with them on Tuesday (his idea) because this particular restaurant is having flamenco dancing. His comment was he’s looking forward to the dancing, it’s too bad the food is terrible. We just laughed. We’ve eaten there several times, and not only has the place gotten great reviews, we like the food too. He’s just Oscar the Grouch. </p>
<p>Interestingly, they are the big party givers of the neighborhood.</p>
<p>Re Friday night dinner: we had very close friends who lived close by – two couples without kids – who started coming every Friday for dinner. I forget how that became such a regular thing, but it was, for years. No pressure to come and absolutely casual, straight from work. </p>
<p>Then my ex started telling other people that they had an open invitation to drop by for Friday dinner. There were probably 12 people invited at the peak but 6 to 8 would show up on any given week; the core group of 4 would come every week and the others would come once a month or so, without kids. He kept that going for 7 or 8 years. He’d know who was coming that day. It was really his thing, not mine, so he dealt with figuring out who was coming and how much to buy etc. Again, the key was that it was extremely casual. I was often late because I got home late from work. </p>
<p>My daughter claimed not to like it. I’ll have to ask her when she’s home from school if she has fond memories of those dinners for all those years.</p>
<p>Thanks, @nottelling. I don’t know if I could make it happen so casually. Once I have people over, they feel compelled to reciprocate, and they keep track. I lose track. Maybe it’s where we live; I don’t know. But I’d really love to have something like that routinely. It just seems like so much fun.</p>
<p>Yeah, I forgot to say that you have to make it clear that this is outside the reciprocation cycle. It was fun, especially in the summer because our house was a beach house. The two couples who were regulars had very small places that weren’t set up for entertaining so it made sense that our house was the gathering place. </p>
<p>notteliing- did they ever bring food or drinks?</p>
<p>We have a group of friends where we do an annual NYEve sleepover. It started over 20 years sog when several of us were very pregnant and we didn’t want to go out on the roads. Then it progressed to one big slumber party with adults and little kids. The couple who typically host it got divorced this year, but the wife (my friend) still wants to have it so that’s what we are doing. It’s very casual, we order pizza and watch Dick Clark / Ryan Seacrest. </p>
<p>Yes, rockymtnhigh, they always brought wine and often brought ingredients for something to make. Again, it was very very casual and everyone pitched in on the cooking (except me because I was usually too tired to cook). </p>