Most tables · all ages
The Mixed Table
One newer marriage, one long one, two in the middle. The default, and the one most couples love.
Charlotte · since 2016
Four couples, one table, twelve suppers a year.
A March table in Plaza Midwood: pot roast, two toddlers asleep upstairs, one very good question.
See how the year worksWhy dinners
Marriages are mostly made at kitchen tables
Most marriage courses ask you to sit in rows and take notes. We think the better teachers are the couple who have been married eleven years longer than you, passing the potatoes and admitting how they nearly didn't make it through year four.
So that's the whole idea. Four couples are matched by neighborhood and season of life. Each month a different couple hosts. Everyone brings a dish, the kids go to a sitter we pay for, and after dessert someone turns over that month's card and reads the question out loud.
The year
How a table comes together
From sign-up to your first supper usually takes about five weeks.
Step 1: Sign up as a couple
Two minutes online. Tell us your neighborhood, how long you've been married, and whether you need childcare.
Step 2: We match four couples
Close enough to drive in fifteen minutes, with at least ten years between the newest and longest marriage.
Step 3: Supper, first Friday
6:30 to 9:15, rotating homes. Host makes the main, everyone else brings a side or dessert.
Step 4: Turn over the card
One question a month, twelve in all. The table leader keeps it kind and on time.
Tables
Four kinds of table
Most couples join a mixed table. Some seasons of marriage need their own.
Married under 2 years
The First-Year Table
Four newlywed couples and one mentor couple who host every third month.
Stepfamilies
The Blended Table
For couples raising each other's kids. Childcare covers every child in both houses.
Engaged couples
Six Dinners
A half-year version before the wedding, hosted by couples married twenty years or more.
On every place card
Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow.
Around the table
What couples say in month twelve
We'd stopped talking about anything except the kids' schedule. Month three's card was 'What did you used to dream about?' We drove home the long way.
Forty-one years married and we still learned something.
The childcare made it possible. Without it we would have canceled every month.
I didn't want to go. I now plan my month around the first Friday.
Ellis told us about the year they nearly split up, over peach cobbler. Nobody had ever been that honest with us at church.
Tables for January are forming now
Sign up by 30 November. New Year's Day takes the first Friday, so January tables start on the 8th.