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Hi bees
Just wondering, for those of you who didnt live together before marriage, did you make an extra effort to learn any wifely skills before the wedding? my cousins age 15 and 17 are being sent on a cookery course in India to prepare them for marriage. Im 25 and cook for myself but my meals are generally a quick 15 mins salad or pasta dish since i get home form work late and cant be bothered to cook an extravagant meal for myself.
so yeah, did you go on a cookery course before marraige?
any other extra skills you made an effort to perfect before marriage?
alot of men who are against living together say to expect 'bad food and bad sex for the first year of marriage' in a 'settling in and learning' period. in mexico sometimes a wife can be sent back to her family to learn these skills if she is not good enough, then go back to her husband when she has learned.
hell no - hubby gave me a rice cooker because i kept ruining his pots making rice and he installed a fire blanket in the kitchen because i have a habit of setting fire to things :)
I didn't do anything special. I know basic skills like laundry and basic cooking, etc. from just taking care of myself, but anything more advanced will come in time.
Since FI works more hours than me, I wanted to learn how to iron button-down shirts. I had no idea how to do it well before.
Other than that we both know how to do basic chores around the house.
My mom would occassionally show me how to do something, but we're on a learning curve, lol. FI and I cook together (but he lets me take the credit) and we divide chores up depending on who has worked more that day.
No I learned everything from my mom and also just taking care of myself. I like to cook though so that wasn't a huge sacrifice. We aren't married yet, but as Christians we have agreed not to live together before marraige. Anyway, I'm sure there will be other things I need to "learn" before then :-). Good luck!
I think it would be more helpful to learn LIFE skills than wife skills,don't you? I almost feel like I'm reading about a manual for women in the 50's! If you can take care of yourself, adding another person into the mix is simple. Get some cookbooks and practice, throwing some dinner parties!
@eloping: lol, yes FI and I both iron. Do you live really close to your MIL? What if you need to wear something last minute and it's wrinkled? :)
@Evie19: ha - i married a good greek man, his parents live right next door... in fact all three sons live/own houses in the same street :)
I learned to cook by practicing. Same thing for ironing, laundry and anything I'm unsure of, I ask the internet.
My girlfriends and I get togther once a week. If I'm up for trying a new recipe, I'll try it out with them. I've also picked up a couple of good ones from them as well. My FI and friends tell me I'm a pretty good cook.
I will add tho, that if FI thinks he's going to have a full meal every night, he's out of his mind. By the time you work, go to the gym, take care of other chores, not a lot of time is left over to prepare an entire meal. We often go out or we throw something together quickly that requires minimal prep.
Thankfully the man I am marrying has survived on his own for many years, so it seems that the things I struggle with, he can do :) Ironing, vacuuming and cleaning the kitchen are his jobs. He cooks a few nights a week too.
And, since we both work at busy and demanding jobs, we still eat simple stuff during the work week. Just because you are married doesn't mean you need to switch to fancy 4 course meals.
Nope. He married the way I am, simple cooking and all. I'm making an effort to learn cause I think it's sort of fun sometimes. But he doesnt cook at all either, if he wants to ever complain about the food I prep for us, he is more than welcome to get his butt in the kitchen. There was no extra effort to perfect any skills prior to marriage. To me, the these skills can be part of the experience and learning curve or marriage... its not going to be perfert straight from the start.
We joke that I have some "wife skills" when I do things like make a nice dinner or pack his suitcase, etc. but I certainly did not do any type of wife training. Living with roomates previously, and cooking at my paretns home has taught me a few things and living together, we get to understand each other's tastes in both food as well as chores.
@smyley: Good way of putting it. When my mom was teaching me stuff, I always got kind of offended by the way she phrased things. It was always "oh, you'll have to do this for your husband," and "DH will expect you to know how to do this."
The weird part is--she and my dad have always split chores! In DH's family, his dad does 90% of the cooking and cleaning because his mom works more.
However, the stuff she was teaching me really was stuff that I needed to know! I wish she would have just called them life skills, or that I would have just listened anyway. Blech.
I learned how to be an adult, not a wife.
The same things I do for myself, cooking, cleaning, ironing, mending,... whatever... are things all adults should know how to do. Sure, I can do things better than others (FI doesn't/won't cook becuase I'm pretty good at it and he likes home-cooked meals). Engaged or single, I'd probably be doing these things for myself, because that's just how grown ups are able to function and live on their own,
Find some cookbooks that are easy, simple meals that taste great. Believe me, I was a "30 minute or less" dinner person before we got married because I never had time for something that took up more time than that. Now, most of our meals are still pretty quick and easy, but I have taken on much larger/more complex cooking projects. I've succcessfully prepared and baked two turkeys! I learned to do it like others have suggested - I watched a few instructional videos, found a simple recipe, and went to it!
Really, the only thing that concerns me now is making sure the meats I bake are cooked thoroughly (a cheap meat thermometer is all you need to double-check that :).
Honestly, Google.com and YouTube.com are my go-to websites when I am preparing something that I have no idea how to make. That, or a quick phone call to my mother to ask her advice. Not sure how close you are with your mom, but she loves it when I call and ask for cooking advice!!
@MissEdamame:do you ever use foodgawker.com? It's my favorite for recipes and "how-tos".
To be completely honest no because those were all things I were taught to do. I was raised to be domestic AND a modern woman and I'm grateful to my mom for that always.
I'm more shocked by men who don't have "husbandly" duties. To me that's a man that knows how to cook, do laundry, clean AND mow the lawn, use a hammer and table saw. I'm ALWAYS shocked when I hear of ladies on here complaining of their husbands who don't help out around the house. I always wonder why didn't their parents teach them this stuff???
I'm very lucky to have a husband that does all that.
The best way to learn to cook, in my opinion, is to take the Nike approach and "just do it!".
Get a cookbook (or print out a bunch of recipes online that look good) and start making meals. Make a goal to make at least 1 new recipe per week.
After a couple months, you'll start to realize what spices go together, how to season lamb differently than beef, etc. Once you get down the flavor profiles, you can open the cabinets and make a meal out of about anything!
@eloping: So funny, FI and I are Greek! My moms house is a few blocks down, although she mostly lives in the States. :)
FI is not old fashioned Greek though, he helps with all the chores and cooking. :)
@kimbean: This would have been my answer as well. I learned life skills so I could live independently, they just so happen to help me now that I'm married. I can do clothes without wrecking them, I can cook without blowing up the oven and DH and I were sleeping together well before we got married.
Start taping cooking shows, that saved me from a life of Ramen and frozen waffles when I was single.
@kimbean: "I learned how to be an adult, not a wife"
@ users saying 'i am an adult therefore i can look after myself' i am also an adult and live alone and can look after myself. but the standard for a wife and mother is surely higher than for a single. i mean when you are single you have all kinds of small habits you dont notice. or things you just DO that might really bug somone.
surely not all of you were spending 60 minutes+ cooking and baking for yourself to have dinner after a long day at work, all of your single life? but when i look in 'Womens Own' magazine, all the 'family recipies' are 60 minutes or more. like i dont mind dinner planning a fancy meal if i have mates over. it might take like an hour to buy all the ingrediaetns, and 2 hours or more to cook everything nicely.
or like if i pack my lunch i bung a yoghurt and an apple in my bag. and i usually skip breakdfast. but my husband might want me to make him really nice foods all the time.
did any of you work less hours when you got married in order to be a better wfe? i dont see how any woman can work a city job, which is like 12 hours a day, plus 2 hours a day commuting, thats 14 hours a day, allowing for 8 hours sleep, that leaves two hours a day in which to do all the chores and cook nice meals.
@KatyElle:Haha! It was touch and go at first. I think going away to college helped, and taught me how to divide household chores, not be a nag over them.
@Shinytoy:Actually, yes. I work 10+ hours a day, still come home and spend an hour in the kitchen and try to make something healthy for myself for dinner, or for a friend. I love to cook and entertain. 15 minute dinners were fine when I was in college, or first moved out, but eating Ramen and Easy Mac every night isn't good for your body, or the mind. I'd still be cranking out complicated meals if I was single or not. I didn't need a fiance to motivate me to "be a grown up" it was something that I wanted for me.
@kimbean: Definitely. Nothing like people fighting over chores constantly to motivate you to get organized with it!
@Gerbera: I agree.
@Shinytoy: My mom and grandmother taught me to do all those things but I'm very lucky because FI's parents not only taught him to do the traditional "man" chores but he helps with laundry and cooking and all that stuff. We're very co-dependent. I know this was for if you weren't living together but we're only together on the weekends right now. Bottom line just jump in and try it but like someone else said you don't need to learn wife skills you need to learn LIFE skills! I love FI unconditionally and couldn't imagine my life without him but my mother also raised me to be very independent and to know how to do all sorts of things because you never know when you're going to have to be doing it for yourself.
I started trying to learn how to cook better when my now husband and I first started dating because I thought it was fun and nice to have someone to share food with. I still enjoy this. I never went to cooking school, but I have taken a few cooking classes and love reading recipe websites and blogs. However, I didn't really think of it as studying to be a wife, but just learning a new skill that I enjoy. I DO want to feed myself and my husband and future children well, but I also happen to enjoy it. As to other "wifely" skills, I'm honestly really bad at them. My husband is better at cleaning, ironing, etc... than I am. He lived on his own for quite awhile and doesn't expect me to do certain chores just because I'm the wife. I'd probably resent him if he did.
As far as preparing to be a wife, I tried to focus more on our relationship and my emotional and mental changes rather than focusing on developing skills such as cooking and cleaning. That said, I do dream of being really good at cooking and cleaning as long as all those responsibilities don't fall on me just because I'm the wife.
"did any of you work less hours when you got married in order to be a better wfe? i dont see how any woman can work a city job, which is like 12 hours a day, plus 2 hours a day commuting, thats 14 hours a day, allowing for 8 hours sleep, that leaves two hours a day in which to do all the chores and cook nice meals."
[comment removed] Why should a woman unwillingly give up her established career to do her man's cooking and cleaning?
@Shinytoy I also work full time plus and with tax season I'm often working 60 hours or more per week. What I do is try and plan out at least 3-4 meals that I actually cook during the week that way I'm not cooking a full meal every night. The other days I do leftovers because with 1 person or even 2 people you have leftovers and I don't want to waste all that food. I also make good use of my crock pot put something in the morning and it's ready when I come home.
@Shinytoy: we are modern women, therefore we share chores. I learned all my skills because I came from a two income family, so my brother and I helped around the house to give our parents a breather. I started cooking when I was like 11 and doing laundry and stuff like that. But I made sure before we got married that my husband knew I am was not a house wife, and damn sure was not going to be doing all the stuff around the house. I do most of the cooking because I'm better at it, but we both clean and do laundry and take care of the pets. Hubs does most of the outside work cuz I have bad allergies, but I tend to my gardens. There are a ton of shows on Food Network that cater to working families, most meals can be done in 30 minutes or less
@KatyElle: lmao
Yes, when I got married I told my boss I had to work 35 hours a week from now on in order to get home early enough to cook DH a meal and put on my pearls.
We plan out and prep as much as we can on Sundays. Then depending on our schedules that week we'll alternate who cooks depending on who works later that day.
@happy2bee:EXACTLY! I do this too! We have a meal planning grid that gets filled out every Sunday -- it includes breafast, lunch, 2 snacks a day, and dinner. It makes it easier to visualize what "dinner" can be converted into "lunch" the next day for two people. When I go out of town for work (which is fairly often), I try to make larger portions of things right before I go, so FI has something to eat. He's also stepping out of his comfort zone and will try to make something for us, (usually just himself, when I'm not around).
@Shinytoy: I'm confused why you think you have to take on all the household responsibility. Your husband has hands, he can help. You are not June Cleaver, this is not 1950. He is a grown man and can get off his ass and do some dishes and run a vacumm. Also, a nice dinner doesn't have to take forever to cook. Maybe you should pick up a couple of Racheal Ray's 30-minute meal cookbooks?
As for annoying habits, everyone has them. I'm sure the man you are marrying has habits that are going to make you want to strangle him. Why are you so worried about what he thinks? If he's marrying you, he abviously knows you and loves you for who you are. DH has habits I hate and I have some that he hates. That's life.
And your snarky comment about us being proud to be adults was uncalled for.
I agree with everyone else who is saying "work on your 'life' skills, don't worry so much about learning to be 'the perfect wife.' "
Take a cooking class...who knows, maybe you'll even meet a nice man! (well, maybe not...but possibly!) ;-)
ETA: just so everyone knows, since some people are mentioning it like this, I believe that the OP is not engaged or even dating, so this is all a more abstract question!
@zippylef: (Have you read some of the OP's other posts? I'm actually not quite sure that that comment was snarky, and not sincere!)
@cafegirl: this is what worries me, there are so many changes ffrom being unmarried to married, emotional, mental, even mundane everyday stuff. it must be really a stressful transition.
@MrsSl82be: i sometimes think those 30 minute meals cant be that good, and a proper wife should spend an hour or so making complicated fancy meals to appeal to the masculine palate
@happy2bee: that is a great tip, but i would feel bad to serve my husband leftovers and think i had failed as a wife somehow. i guess prepping the dinner, veg etc before going to work so all that needs doing is shoving it in the oven would probably work.
@kimbean: thanks, the meal planning grid seems a great idea
at the moment i am really stressed because i have this idea of how a wife should be - look great all the time, perfect hair, gym honed figure, clothes, perfect housekeeping - always tidy and spotless, perfect mother - always has time for the kids, kids are always clean and tidy and help with their homework, perfect cook - spends an hour making complicated tasty meals for husband, perfect office job - earns loads and is never stressed.
and im nothing like that. there is a big gap of shortcomings i thinki need to fill before i can be a good wife
anyone seen the sarah jessica parker film 'i dont know how she does it'?
also im vegetarian and have never cooked meat, when i get married i guess i will have to and this grosses me out?
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