Marriage Mondays: Awesome Activity You Can Do With Your Husband & Friends {& Link-Up}

By Fawn Weaver on Monday, June 24, 2013

Awesome Activity You Can Do With Your Husband-Friends

Keith and I had an absolute blast last night with some of our closest friends; all married couples.  So much fun I wouldn’t even dream of keeping it to myself.

While traveling the world last summer, and interviewing couples happily married 25-years or more, I came across this very cool activity.

A couple in Perth, Australia got together with their closest married friends -nine couples in all- every other month to travel the world…without ever leaving home.

Allow me to explain.

This group of friends created passports for each person, including customized country passport stamps, and every other month they’d visit a new country by way of food and decor.

A different couple hosts the event each time, finding the perfect restaurant (or turning their home into one), and then the group all travels to the chosen location together.

The hosts are charged with knowing all about the country they’ve chosen and throughout the evening they share different things about the culture, food, people, etcetera.  It’s a beautiful way to get to know the entire world (while spending time with your friends) at a fraction of the cost.

After I returned from my travels, Keith and I invited nine of our favorite couples to join us in creating our very own World on a Plate (WOAP).

The funny (yet oh-so-sad) thing is we were the first hosts and chose our favorite ethnic restaurant.  The problem was -and we didn’t realize this until it was time to create the country passport stamp- we chose a restaurant that served Pan-Asian food.  

Hmmmm…you mean there’s no country called Pan-Asia? How’d that happen?

We had a wonderful time but that definitely wasn’t the way we wanted to start off the American version of WOAP. This time around, my sister and her Dominican-born husband hosted us -eight couples in total- at a real country: the Dominican Republic.  It was some of the most fun we have ever had with our wonderful group of friends.

When we arrived, they had the Dominican Republic flag waving outside and when we entered their home, we were all greeted by a colorful sign that read, “Kings WOAP Dominican Republic Night” and leis in the colors of the Dominican flag.  Each of us put on our leis as we entered the home.

The decor was colorful and festive.  Dominican music filled the air as drinks and a 4-course dinner that began with albondigas (meatballs) and hit a high note with sudado de pollo (sweaty chicken) and carne de res guisada (braised beef with rice and beans) filled our stomachs.

We ate and ate until our tummies could not possibly take in one more thing.  Carlos, my sister’s husband, told stories of growing up in the Dominican Republic and gave us a look into his country (he doesn’t like desserts or candy because as a kid he’d climb up trees and hack off a piece of fruit if he wanted something sweet).

It was a fabulous night and a wonderful way to encourage happiness in marriage.  When you get together with a group of married friends, and the only thing you focus on is all that’s beautiful in life, nights like this carry on with us long after the evening has come to an end.

Give World on a Plate a try with your own group of married friends. I promise it’ll be well worth the effort.

QUESTION: Do you and your married friends have any special activities you enjoy doing together?

Until tomorrow…make it a great day!

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Fawn Weaver

Founder at Happy Wives Club
Fawn Weaver is the USA Today® and New York Times® bestselling author of Happy Wives Club: One Woman's Worldwide Search for the Secrets of a Great Marriage, adopting the same name as the Club she founded in 2010. The Happy Wives Club community has grown to include more than 900,000 women in over 110 countries around the world. When she’s not blogging or working on her next project, she's happily doting over her husband of nearly eleven years, Keith.

 

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  • Kelly @Besote

    I love this idea! When I was single, I belonged to a supper club and had a blast. It must be fabulous with other couples and theming out anything is a lot of fun. Great post!

    • http://www.happywivesclub.com/ Fawn @ Happy Wives Club

      Thanks, Kelly! You have to try it…SO much fun!

  • Tyson Cooper

    Awesome idea Fawn! My wife and I have quite a few friends who have spent several years living in other countries and got to know the country, people, and cultures quite well (I lived in Brazil for two years myself). This would be a blast! I’ll have to discuss it with Cami…

    • http://www.happywivesclub.com/ Fawn @ Happy Wives Club

      Yes, discuss with Cami and make sure to tell me if you choose to do it. Even if you just have “Brazil night” at your home once and see what everyone thinks. For ours, everyone chips in $20/pp and that’s all inclusive of everything and it works perfectly. A great night out with friends without being a burden on the host home (and when we go to restaurants, we’ll try to find places that can stay within that range).

  • Alecia

    What a fantastic idea!

    • http://www.happywivesclub.com/ Fawn @ Happy Wives Club

      We had a blast, Alecia! Hope you get a chance to try it out :) .

  • http://www.messymarriage.com/ Beth Steffaniak

    That sounds like so much fun, Fawn. What a great idea. Thanks for sharing about this. I’ll have to talk to some of our “couple” friends about doing this soon!

    • http://www.happywivesclub.com/ Fawn @ Happy Wives Club

      Fun times! Let me know if you and you friends decide to do it :) .

  • http://www.toodarnhappy.com/ Kim Hall

    Years ago, we did some progressive dinners in which we’d do each course at a different couples house. I like this twist on a group meal. What a neat way to learn about different places and to try new foods! Thanks for the idea.

    • http://www.happywivesclub.com/ Fawn @ Happy Wives Club

      That sounds like it was loads of fun too!

  • ArlenePellicane

    What a great idea! We have plenty of new restaurants to try. This is also a fun way to get kids to be more adventurous in eating and to be more interested in other countries!

    • Fawn @ Happy Wives Club

      Yes! I hadn’t thought about it for this purpose but that could definitely be pretty fantastic.

  • Christine

    I did something similar for my family. We weren’t able to go away on a family vacation last year because my children had the whooping cough – all summer long. :( So I brought a vacation to them. We “traveled” to Jamaica for a weekend. I created passports (complete with pictures!), airline tickets, and a travel itinerary and left them in a small decorative suitcase (purchased at Michael’s) for my family to find. I transformed our gazebo into a Jamaican restaurant with tropical decor, Jamaican music, etc. I ordered food from an authentic Jamaican restaurant in our area and served Jamaican coffee with dessert. We played dominoes Jamaican-style (a favorite pastime there) and watched the movie Cool Runnings.

    To make things special for my husband, I transformed our bedroom and master bathroom into a Jamaican-style resort with spa. (I looked at Jamaican resorts online and took ideas from there.) I named our room the “Coyaba Suite” and hung a small sign on our bedroom door to make it look official. “Coyaba” means heavenly. To transform our bedroom I made some pillow shams using tropical fabric, purchased a few plants, added tropical accessories, and distressed an old shutter and hung it horizontally over our headboard with some seashells strung on it. I got some Jamaican travel books from our library and left them on a table along with an ice bucket that had a bottle of sparkling juice in it. I had “Carribean Spa” music playing softly in the room when we “checked in”.

    My family still talks about our trip to Jamaica, especially my husband. And, it was such a blessing for me to be able to do this for them!

    • Fawn @ Happy Wives Club

      How awesome, Chriistine! Thank you so much for sharing this awesome story :) .

  • Nicole

    I REALLY want to try this but I am afraid my family/friends would think it was cheesy. I don’t know, I would like to do the passports/airline tickets/suitcase thing as their “invitation” and leave it on their doorstep or something!! I think they would appreciate the effort. I like the Jamaican idea for the first try since ideas are already listed!! :) I think I want to host the first party and THEN invite our friends to do some at their houses, alternating each month!!