12 Creative Date Ideas for 2021

Looking for creative date night (or date day!) ideas? I’ve got you covered! As we started 2020 Alex and I really wanted to prioritize date nights but not just ‘dinner and movie’ but actual experiences and new activities to be tried together. To that end, we decided to do “Surprise Monthly Date Days” alternating planning a surprise date. I wanted to share with you the dates we had for each of month of 2020 to help inspire you if you’re looking for a creative date night idea.

In my (biased) opinion, the surprise monthly date day plan is fantastic and something you should totally all try. It gives you something to look forward to in the blah months (… I’m looking at you January and February).

Below I’ll list date we did by month, but of course you can try any of these dates in whatever month works best for you!

12 Creative Date Ideas for 2021:

January: Whiskey Festival

This was my month to plan and Alex is a huge fan of whiskey, so I knew I wanted to start out the new year with a fun date related to that. I found a whiskey festival happening here in Vancouver and snagged some tickets. It was such a fun event and we tasted over 50 whiskeys. So this ‘creative date night idea’ would be to find a festival for something your partner loves – it could be whiskey, a certain type of cuisine, whatever. You’ll have so much fun seeing how much they love it, and it’s a great way to experience something they are super interested in!

February: Spa Day at a Local Hotel

For our February date Alex got us a spa day at a local hotel. Spa days are fun in general, but it was really cool and felt so luxurious to go and have a spa day locally. It seems like something you only do on vacation! I feel like we all forget to try out hotels, spas, etc. of the city we live in so this is something I highly recommend for a date that feels like a total getaway.

March: Learn to Paint to Night

Have you heard of wine and paint nights?! There are painting studios that host these nights (usually once a month) where you get tickets and you and your significant other go, get a bottle of wine, and paint a canvas together following the directions of a teacher! Now, we did this date in the middle of a lockdown (fun, fun) so I actually took that concept and did a DIY-version. I bought canvas and paints and set us up with a YouTube tutorial for a couple’s painting. I highly recommend the one we did, the painting was beautiful and the teacher taught at the perfect speed. You can learn more about the one we did in this post on 15 at-home date ideas.

April: Italian Night In

This was another lockdown date, but I was so impressed with what Alex came up with and highly recommend it if you’re looking for a creative date idea that you can do at home. Pick any culture you like and do a night in eating takeout of their cuisine (or try cooking a recipe!), watching a show about the place, and even planning a trip. Alex got us take out from the most amazing Italian place in Vancouver and we drank limoncello and had the best time!

May: Carnival Day

Remember being a kid and being absolutely over the moon excited to play fair games and eat cotton candy? Try out a carnival day as a date! If you have a carnival / fair happening near you this is an obvious / easy one. But if you don’t (or if you’re under COVID rules still like we were) create an at-home carnival! For game ideas, snack recipes and more check out my carnival-themed at home date night.

June: Walking Tour of Our City

I said it before, I’ll say it again: we don’t spend enough time experiencing the cities we live in! For our June date day Alex found an online audio ‘walking tour’ of Vancouver. We started with that and then checked out our own Vancouver “must-see’s” that we hadn’t done before. I learned so much about the history that I didn’t know about.

July: Art Gallery Tour

If you or your partner is interested in art, you can’t go wrong with a date day checking out local art galleries. Come up with a game plan (3 or 4 you wanna go to, and in what order) and head out for a day of exploring.

August: Water Biking!

Ok, this one is a bit specific, but in general I’d say to try out an aquatic activity together at your nearest lake (or Ocean!) If you have ‘water bikes’ where you live you should totally try them out. For Alex’s summer  date day he rented water bikes and they were so much fun! It’s basically a regular bike built on to these giant platoon type floaties so you bike around the beach / coastline in the ocean!

September: Recreate Your First Date

I came up with the idea to recreate our first date while unable to sleep one night and knew it needed to be one of my monthly creative date ideas. You can obviously go as big or small as you want with this – going to the restaurant you went to that first date, etc. Alex and I went to the restaurant we went to on our first date, followed by the cocktail lounge we also went to. I realized I still had the exact outfit I wore on first date so I wore that – and Alex noticed right away! This was a fun addition to re-creating the date.

October: Hire a Photographer and do a Couples Photo Shoot

So Alex didn’t really do an October ‘date day’ per se because, ya know, he planned a PROPOSAL! lol. I guess we’ll let his not planning a date slide because of that ;). One thing Alex did say though is that even if you take the proposal out of it (read our proposal story) just hiring a photographer to do a photo shoot is an awesome and creative date idea. I totally agree!

November: Go Snow Tubing!

Even if winter sports aren’t your thing, no one can say no to snow tubing! Find a local ski hill that offers tubing as well and head out on the slopes! We had a blast (and apparently I scream like a maniac when going fast down the hill haha).

December: Board Game Night In

Order some new board games and curl up with your partner for a cozy games night in! Alex knew I liked escaped rooms (but none were open because of the lockdown) so he actually ordered an escape room board game – which I didn’t even know existed! Basically, they have games now that are designed to only be played once where you literally are ripping up pieces of the game, cutting things etc. to solve the puzzles and ‘escape’ like you would in an escape room. Check out the brand/game Alex got here – EXIT the game. (Canadian friends you can get it here).

So there you have it! A year’s worth of our surprise dates, and hopefully a bunch of creative date ideas to try out yourself! 🙂