Our Picks for Great Date Ideas

Before we got married, my main objective on every date with my wife was to always to get to know her better and strengthen the bonds of our relationship. After nearly 20 years together, including 12 years of marriage, my main objective now is … get to know my wife better and strengthen our relationship. Check back with me in another 20 years and the answer is going to be the same because the best dates, the ones you really remember and make an impact, are the ones that bring you closer together. Today, we’re going to give you our picks for fun date ideas that will help you do just that. Also, I remember the budget we had when we were teens, the budget we had as young newlyweds and the budget we have now with 4 kids were all very different. It doesn’t always take a lot of money to put together a great date, so we’ll be giving date ideas for whatever stage of life your wallet is in!

Number 5 on our list is a fun spin on the classic dinner date night, it’s the Thrift on the Greens date! For this date, you’re going to start in your favorite local thrift store! You’re each going to pick out the fanciest, or maybe the funniest, suit or dress for your date, buy it for them and wear it out of the store. After that, you'll head down to the craziest put-put golf course in town and see who’s ready for the PGA tour and who’s getting stuck in the sand pits.

Next on our countdown, at number 4 is a twofer with a guaranteed next date! It's the Hobby Swap! On this one, you’ll choose one of your favorite things that you love to do and share it with your date! Maybe you take them to play basketball 1 on 1, maybe you take them to the comic book store. Then, on your next time out, they share one of their favorite hobbies with you. This is a great option because you both have the opportunity to learn about and appreciate the joys of the other person.

Number 3 on our countdown is the Photo Scavenger Hunt date. For this date, you’ll work together to compile a list beforehand. Maybe you use one you’ll find online or maybe you’ll take turns thinking up items for the list. Once you’ve got your list, head out to somewhere in town where there are plenty of people and start snapping pictures as you work your way through the list. It’s more fun if the scavenger hunt involves other people, like find someone with a super-hero t-shirt and sing “I need a hero” to them. Pro tip – make sure you save the pictures after the date. Down the line, you can surprise them with a photo album of the two of you together and you can fill a whole section with pictures from your scavenger hunt date!

Have you ever noticed that lunch and dinner tend to be the go to’s for dates, but what about breakfast? Number 2 on our list is called the Early Bird Special and you’ll be meeting up before school or work over pancakes, cinnamon rolls or whatever breakfast food you like, but most definitely coffee! This date might require you to meet up before sunrise and it may sound terrible, but it could also be the start of a really great day! The idea here is that by changing one aspect of the traditional date, it could open up completely different conversations, you’re able to put less pressure on yourselves because you’ll be leaving here and going onto the rest of your day and another bonus is that breakfast food is usually a lot cheaper than the other meals!

Number one on our countdown is one for those who have known each other for a while. Put together a stack of pictures from random moments throughout your relationship. Then, go out to those places and try to recreate the picture with each other now. You can try to get as many pictures in one date as possible and then come back down the line and do some more. This date is great because it reminds you of all the time that you’ve shared together while allowing you to create new memories while you’re doing it. This one could even be set up as a surprise by just one of you. Plan your stops and only reveal the next picture once the previous one has been reshot. It can be a lot of fun for them to see the pictures and have to remember where they were taken in order to get to the next one.

Well, that’s our top 5 list for great date ideas. Let us know your favorites from our list and some ideas that you have as well in the comments below. On our live podcast for the month of August, we’ll be digging deeper into dating, courtship and answering the timeless question “How far is too far?” We are also celebrating our 1 year anniversary since wholehearted launched online so it will be a fun time. Next month, we’re circling back to one of our most talked about and requested series as we get into Boundaries Pt. 2! If you missed our first month on boundaries, you can find that and all of our other healthy relationship content from the past year at askwholehearted.com. Thank you for joining us over these past twelve months and we’ll see you again next week!