When you’re planning a first date, it’s easy to go the cliche route. But what if you want to do something more to impress your date than the classic dinner-and-a-movie?
Sure, there is a benefit to the tried-and-true methods for a classic first date. But what if you want to keep the date fun, low-key, creative, daring your low-budget? In that case, you’re looking for some unique first date ideas—and we’ve got you covered!
Read on for our list of 33 first date ideas that you’ll love.
- Show off your skills at trivia night at the local bar or restaurant.
- Walk dogs at a no-kill animal shelter. They need the lovin’!
- Take a one-off cooking class. Cooking food together is always romantic.
- Float down a river, whether in a canoe, raft or inner tubes.
- Visit an arcade and see who can win at air hockey.
- Touch and play with everything at a science museum.
- Dance together at an outdoor music festival.
- Answer Chat Pack questions on a bench in the park. ###
- Fly a kite together on a super windy day.
- Spend the afternoon in a candy store, amassing a tasty haul, then munch your score on the beach.
- Tour your town’s most haunted location—get close if you get scared.
- Go on a quest for your favorite childhood snacks.
- Climb the monkey bars at a nearby playground.
- Go sledding at the height of winter. Finish off the date with some comforting hot cocoa.
- Attend a play—way better than a movie!
- Go to a coffee shop and play a board game together while sipping your favorite brew.
- Play a game of one-on-one basketball.
- Create your own drive-in with a projector shining at a plain white garage door.
- Sit around a campfire, roast marshmallows and tell scary stories.
- Go to open mic night at a local club and dare each other to get up on stage.
- Play hide and go seek at an Ikea. Just make sure you don’t scare the other shoppers!
- Go apple-picking.
- Pick out your own pumpkins at a pumpkin patch and have a contest for the better Jack ‘O Lantern.
- Go for a walk around the park and sit at every bench you see.
- Get your palms read or a joint tarot-reading. Do your futures align?
- Go to a gift shop and buy each other a surprise gift for $5 each.
- Watch the sunset from a mountain trail.
- Tour an art museum and pick out your favorite and least favorite works of art.
- For all you photography-lovers, go on a photo walk and take great pictures of the downtown landscape.
- Pretend you’re new in town and ask a gas station attendant where you two should do. Go wherever they suggest!
- Buy a toy and give it to the first kid you see, then walk away as if nothing happened.
- Feed the homeless at a soup kitchen.
- Play Frisbee on the beach.