Fall is my very favorite season! And although the traditional activities and fall dates that come with it only last for a little over a month, we try to enjoy every minute of it! I created a list of date nights specifically for this season. These fall date night ideas are to help you enjoy every moment of fall, from the changing weather to the cooler days.
This list of fall activities includes things that can be done at home or out on the town. It has activities for outdoor lovers and for those of us who prefer to stay indoors when it gets too cold. I’ve included date ideas for rainy days, and the holidays associated with the season as well. You will find these fall date night ideas grouped by type of weather to do them in, outdoor and indoor activities, as well as some specific to the different months that autumn is a part of.
You can even take a few of the date ideas and turn them into multiple activities, depending on how you choose to participate in the activity each time. I hope these fall date night ideas inspire you to make date night a priority in your marriage and spend intentional quality time together this season!
For more date night ideas like these, check out the book, Prioritizing Date Night in Your Marriage, with 300+ date night ideas.
Fall is the perfect time to start planning for the coming year. Head to your favorite restaurant, one that will let you stay for a while. Spend the night brainstorming things that you’d like to do together for date night next calendar year, the fall season, or even during the upcoming holidays. Check out this post for tips on creating your perfect date night bucket list. Don’t forget to bring some paper and a pen with you. Bonus if you go somewhere you can enjoy special menu items only available this time of year. Those fall flavors will put you in a cozy mood for planning your fall fun.
Related: How to Create Your Date Night Bucket List
When the leaves start to change colors, go out exploring and enjoy them. Drive up the canyon, or take a walk around your neighborhood taking in the view. Hold hands and fall in love with each other all over again. Plan a family date to rake up the leaves in your yard, or as a service to one of your neighbors and jump in the piles after you’ve raked them. Don’t forget a cup of hot chocolate or apple cider to enjoy during your drive or after your leaf raking.
Invite your friend group or your siblings and their significant others to your house for the occasion. Build a big fire and cozy up around it together. Make tin foil dinners (meat, potatoes, and vegetables wrapped in tin foil and cooked near the fire). Or if you’re ambitious, break out the Dutch ovens and try a recipe specific to Dutch oven cooking. Don’t forget the marshmallows, chocolate, and cookies for s’mores!
Find a football game happening near you and get tickets. Wear the school’s colors, whether they’re a team you usually root for or not. Participate in all of the cheers and songs, maybe even start the wave. Pack up all of your favorite tailgating foods or visit the concession stand during the game. Find a group of friends to attend the game with you for even more fun.
Many schools and cities have festivals this time of year. Seek one out and make a night of it. Fall is the perfect time to experience the fun festival atmosphere either as a family or just the two of you. Get lost in a corn maze, play in the corn pit, eat all of the good fall food, etc.
Does your county have a fair? County fairs often happen toward the end of summer or the beginning of fall. The same is true with state fairs. These can be a lot of fun with rides, attractions, fair food, exhibits, and other things to see. Make a group date of it and invite some friends to come along with you.
Support your local farmers by shopping for fresh, local produce. You will enjoy fresh baked goods, homemade decor, and locally grown fruits and vegetables. Take your spoils home and enjoy a locally sourced meal together. Or stick around the market and make a picnic of what you bought while people watching or enjoying live entertainment.
Find a local cookoff you can join, or create your own with family and friends. Work together to make the perfect pot of chili and go for the win! Barbecue or smoke-offs are also popular this time of year with everyone showing off their grilling or smoking skills. If you can’t find one in your area to join, create your own with a group of friends or your neighbors. You can keep it more intimate and compete against each other. Pick a soup, chili, or cut of meat that you’re going to use and set the parameters of your competition. Vote together, or invite a neighbor or your kids to taste test both of your creations and choose the winning dish.
Find an Oktoberfest celebration near you to join, or create your own celebration at home. Purchase craft beers (or root beers if you don’t drink) and make or purchase pretzels to enjoy at home. Cozy up in sweatshirts and blankets and hang out outside together enjoying the fall air and your Oktoberfest food. Oktoberfest is a German holiday so you could also seek out German restaurants near you or make German food at home.
There is something so cozy about fall rainstorms. Take a blanket outside and cuddle on a bench or in a hammock. Or sit inside on the couch with the windows open. Sit in silence, holding hands and listening to the sound of the rain. Embrace your inner child and find the largest puddle to splash in. Be sure to enjoy a cup of hot chocolate afterward.
Related: Cold Weather Date Night Idea – Hot Chocolate Tasting
Home-baked goods are a great addition to any fall morning! Make a family favorite recipe from scratch or grab your favorites from the freezer section of the store. Cook up your favorite breakfast meat and heat a cup of hot chocolate. Enjoy it all out on the porch in the fall air after it’s ready.
Build yourselves a fort out of pillows and blankets using the couches or your kitchen chairs or table as the foundation. Read books together, watch a movie or binge a TV show, or play your favorite board and card games.
Related: Book Club Date Idea – Starting a Book Club in Your Marriage
Find a Bed & Breakfast or cabin you can rent for the night. Bring your warmest clothes, cozy food, fall movies, board games, and getaway together for the weekend. Spend the weekend cozied up together, listening to the rain, and connecting.
Pull your mattress into the living room or build a fort out of pillows and blankets. Order your favorite takeout, pop some popcorn, and grab the junk food. Pull out your favorite movie series and make a day or an evening of it. Check out this post for a list of date night movies you’ll both enjoy. Some great movies to watch might be Harry Potter or Marvel Comic movies. You could also binge-watch your current Netflix favorite. Make it fall-themed with movies like Halloweentown, Hocus Pocus, E.T., Clue, Ghostbusters, Sleepy Hollow, Murder on the Orient Express, or Practical Magic. If spooky and scary aren’t your thing, you can still get that fall feeling from a movie marathon. Movies that take place during the fall; Sweet Home Alabama, When Harry Met Sally, Knives Out, Mona Lisa Smile, The Goonies, Matilda, or Little Women
Related: Date Night Movies You’ll Both Enjoy
Make a trip to a couple of local stores and search for everything pumpkin or pumpkin spice you can find. Cereal, drinks, pastries, pasta, cold desserts, etc. Bring them all home to try and rate them for how close to pumpkin spice flavor they taste, which one tastes the best, and which items you would enjoy again.
We love subscription boxes for date night at home any time of the year. You can find a variety of tried and true boxes you might love for date night by clicking here. One of my favorite boxes for fall date nights at home is the Falling for You box from Date Night In. Their Game Night box also looks like a lot of fun for a cozy night at home this time of year. Each box includes multiple interactive activities, a link to a playlist curated for that date night, a dinner menu to add to your date, conversation starters, ideas to continue the date beyond what’s in the box, and more. Click here for a full review of Date Night In subscription boxes and why we love using them for date nights.
At our house, we decorate for fall in September and those same decorations stay up through Thanksgiving weekend when they’re replaced with Christmas decor. Some people decorate for fall, switch to Halloween in October, and then go back to fall with a Thanksgiving vibe for November. Grab a few new decorations and spend your date listening to music, eating fall treats, and drinking something warm while you bring fall into your house.
Related: The Ultimate Date Night Playlist
Cold weather is perfect for soup. Get a pot of your favorite soup cooking and spend time in the kitchen baking soup bowls together. When everything’s finished, dim the lights, put out some candles, and enjoy a cozy meal of homemade food. If you’re not feeling up to cooking or don’t have the time, get your favorite soup to go and grab soup bowls from a local bakery.
Cold weather calls for cozy afternoon naps. On a good weather day, take your nap outside under a tree or on an air mattress on your deck. When it’s raining, cold, or dreary, cuddle up together in your bed or on your couch and enjoy connecting while you sleep. If cuddling while you sleep is too hot for you, try holding hands or touching feet instead.
Related: 12 At-Home Date Ideas to Keep You Cozy and In Love
To me, a corn maze is just a long walk with an added element of fun. I love wandering through it, holding hands, talking about life, and trying to find our way to the other side. Oftentimes you’ll find a fall festival alongside a corn maze. Get your favorite fall treats, warm up by the fire, watch the stars come out, and just have fun together! If you’re up for something spooky or scary, visit a haunted maze.
Eat dinner out of a pumpkin (search online for “soup in a pumpkin” or “dinner in a pumpkin”). If your area has a pumpkin walk, visit to get inspiration for your pumpkin carving or just to enjoy the talent. Visit a pumpkin patch and pick out pumpkins together, then decorate or carve your pumpkins. Make a pumpkin dessert and deliver it to your neighbors, but be sure to save some for yourselves to enjoy. Watch It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Involve your kids by turning your pumpkin decorating into a competition and letting them be the judges.
We don’t usually dress up for Halloween because it’s the husband’s birthday and it’s not his thing. But I love seeing all of the creative couples and family costumes that other people come up with and share! Make a date night out of coming up with an idea for your costume. And shopping for the supplies you’ll need to put it together and get everything ready for the big day!
Decorate your porch for Halloween, or fall, or to fit your couple’s costume. If you have older kids who go out on their own for the holiday, or no kids yet, man your porch together for the night. Turn on themed music and share your Halloween memories in between groups of kids. Make it fun by picking out your favorite candy mixes, filling up similar-sized bowls, and seeing whose candy was the most popular by the end of the night.
Our kids are young and it’s a lot of fun to see the excitement of holidays through their eyes. With two little ones, it takes two of us to make trick-or-treating a success. It’s a fun mini-date idea. And then you can sneak a few pieces of candy and watch a scary movie together after they’re in bed.
The two of us aren’t big fans of scary movies or spooky haunted houses. But I know a lot of people who are, and it’s the perfect activity for a fall date! Haunted houses are open for a limited time during the year. And it’s best to take advantage of the short window you have to visit all of the haunted attractions in your area.
There are lots of haunted or paranormal activity locations you can tour, outside of the classic haunted house. Search for ghost tours or haunted site tours near you and learn some spooky history about the area where you live.
Bowling is such a classic date night, and fun to do as the weather turns colder. Or on a night when it’s the weather is bad and you aren’t able to enjoy your planned activity.
Check to see when a local art studio is offering a couple’s paint night, or order one you can do at home. Click here for ideas for a couple’s paint night based on budget, whether you’re going out or staying in, and even a few intimate paint night ideas if that’s your thing.
Related: Paint Night Date for Couples in Every Stage of Life
We love looking for restaurants in our area where we’ve never eaten and trying them out. We ask for suggestions from our friends and family. Or drive around areas we’re not as familiar with. And then look up the ratings online to see if they’re worth trying. We’ve found a lot of great new places to eat in our area this way and added them to our date night favorites.
Related: Super Simple Date Night Idea – Discover a New Restaurant Together
A lot of local grocery stores or other places in the area have great cooking classes that you can take together as a couple. Some are on an individual basis, but still fun to do together, and others are set up to be a date night. I think it’s fun to learn how to cook new food together. Or go to a class to learn new skills for something you already make regularly.
Related: Connecting Through Cooking Together
A lot of bookstores have cafes in them or a place where you can sit and read. Peruse the shelves together for your new favorite book. Read side by side or sit and read together. Get a treat and a drink to enjoy while you read after you’ve purchased the book and made it yours.
The time around holidays can get busy with family stuff and preparations. Making a date night out of making whatever you’ve been asked to bring to Thanksgiving dinner is a fun way to celebrate the holiday together!
Invite your friends or family over for a group date and have them bring their favorite pie, homemade or storebought. Vote for the best pie of each flavor, sweet vs. savory, homemade vs. storebought vs. bakery, and most delicious overall.
This is the time of year when people are thinking about others. Seek out opportunities in your community to give back and make a date of it. You’ll get to see another side of each other and you’ll have a new appreciation for life when you’re done! Places to look for volunteer opportunities include local food pantries, youth groups, homeless resources, or justserve.org.
We don’t do any Black Friday shopping in-store. I don’t like to fight the crowds and my husband used to work retail so he prefers not to add to the chaos. Plus, we can generally get everything that we need online. A lot of sales start after Thanksgiving dinner, but some don’t hit until midnight. Make a date out of staying up late to shop the sales you have your eye on. Play games, make a treat, or watch a movie until the sales you want to take advantage of start.
You can bet that we’ll be using a lot of these fall date night ideas over the next couple of months. This is the season when we fell in love, so there’s extra magic in it. And it’s both of our birthdays, so we always do a lot of celebrating. I hope the fall weather is perfect this year, wherever you are, and that it lasts longer than a week so you can enjoy every moment of it! Enjoy your fall date nights!
