For Friendsgiving

How to plan Friendsgiving: start with the night everyone can make

The turkey is the easy part. The hard part of Friendsgiving is the date: half your friends fly home for Thanksgiving, a few host their own family, and someone always has a work thing. Here's how to plan Friendsgiving so the date is settled in a day, and the rest can follow.

whenfor.us · Updated October 26, 2026

When is Friendsgiving usually?

There's no official date. Friendsgiving lands wherever it fits around Thanksgiving, which is always the fourth Thursday of November. Groups usually pick one of these:

• The weekend before Thanksgiving. The most common choice: everyone is still in town, and nobody is full of turkey yet.
• A weeknight the week before, or even the Tuesday of Thanksgiving week, for groups where a lot of people leave on Wednesday.
• The Saturday or Sunday after, when people are back from family and happy to eat leftovers-style food with friends.

Which one is right depends entirely on who travels when, and you won't know that until you ask. So don't ask "Saturday the 21st?" in the chat. Ask everyone to mark every evening they're free across those two weeks, and let the overlap pick.

How to plan Friendsgiving in five steps

1. Make a link for the season. Name it "Friendsgiving", choose "Pick dates" and cover the two weekends around Thanksgiving, from the Saturday a week and a half before to the Sunday after. Set the hours to evenings, say 5 to 11 pm, or include afternoons if a Sunday lunch could work.
2. Use 3-hour slots under "More options". Friendsgiving is a long dinner, so the best time should be a block you can actually eat in, not a free hour.
3. Mark your own nights first. If you're hosting, your kitchen is the one that matters, so your times go in before anyone else's.
4. Send the link with a deadline. "Mark your free nights by Sunday, I'll pick on Monday." People who fly out on Wednesday simply leave those evenings blank.
5. Pick the night and announce it. Tap "Pick the final time". Everyone sees "It's on!" with who can make it, adds it to their calendar, and you post the ready picture and message back in the chat.

Tips from groups who do this every year

Ask in early November

Flights home and family plans get fixed early. If you send the link in the first week of November, people still have open evenings to mark. Send it the week before, and you'll be choosing between the two nights nobody wanted.

Decide what "everyone" means

With ten friends and Thanksgiving travel, a night when all ten are free may not exist. Decide up front: is 8 of 10 enough, or are there one or two people (the host, the friend who always brings the pie) the dinner can't happen without? The best-time sentence names who is missing, so the choice is quick and nobody feels quietly left out.

Tap the cells

The heatmap shows how many people are free on each evening. Tap a cell to see exactly who. That's how you notice that Friday works for eight, but Saturday works for seven including both people who are driving in from out of town.

Put the practical bits in the details

When you make the link, open "More options" and add details: the address, what time to show up, whether partners and roommates are welcome, and a link to your potluck list (a shared doc or sheet works; up to three links, no link shorteners). Everyone sees them on the event page.

Potluck: date first, dishes second

Dish sign-ups only make sense once you know who's coming. whenfor.us isn't a sign-up sheet, and it doesn't need to be: once the night is picked, the "It's on!" page shows who can make it, and that's your list for assigning sides, drinks and desserts in the chat or a shared doc.

Friends in other cities

Doing a video Friendsgiving with friends who moved away, or one friend dialing in from abroad? Everyone sees the grid in their own time zone automatically, so they mark their real evening and nobody has to convert anything.

A Friendsgiving timeline that works

• Early November: send the link and give people a few days to mark their free evenings.
• Right after the deadline: pick the night, even if one or two people haven't answered. A date that exists beats a perfect date that doesn't.
• The same day: post the "It's on!" message in the chat and ask who brings what, now that you know who's coming.
• A week before: check the headcount against your table and chairs. If the group grew, borrowing a folding table is easier than squeezing twelve people around six seats.
• Two days before: a short reminder in the chat with the time and the address. whenfor.us doesn't send reminders, so this one is on you.

Hosting for a mixed group

Friendsgiving often brings together people who don't all know each other: roommates, coworkers, a partner's friends. That's exactly where the group chat goes quiet, because nobody wants to be the one who says "not Saturday". With an availability grid, nobody has to say no out loud. They just leave the evening blank, and the overlap does the talking.

After Friendsgiving

December comes fast. If your group does a holiday party too, "Plan the next one" reopens the form with the same setup, and the Christmas party guide has tips for the busiest month of the year. If the group enjoyed cooking together, a regular dinner club keeps it going.