New Year’s Eve can be one of the most romantic nights of the year. It’s an exciting time to celebrate and reminisce about your journey as a couple and to create new memories. However, pressured to have an amazing time, many couples struggle deciding what to do.
To help you decide, here are 14 ways you and your partner can make this New Year’s Eve the most romantic ever.
1. Spend the Evening at Home
If facing crowds and the elements on New Year’s Eve isn’t for you, make it all about you and your partner by spending an intimate evening at home. You can order out or cook something together, listen to music or watch movies, go for a walk or lie in bed all night.
2. Have a Midnight Picnic
Have a romantic picnic under the stars in your backyard, weather permitting, or indoors, in the most spacious room in your home. Improve the ambiance with a fire pit or fireplace. If you lack these, search YouTube for a fireplace video featuring burning and crackling sounds. Keep the meal light, but enjoy a nice bottle of sparkling wine.
3. Go Camping in Your Backyard
If you have the privacy, grab a tent and some bedding and head outside for a romantic night. Light up the fire pit and make smores. Maybe you can see or hear your city’s fireworks display from your yard. Too cold outside? Build an old-school fort in your living room and camp indoors.
4. Enjoy a Movie Night
Curl up on the couch or in bed with some popcorn, chocolate and champagne, and watch New Year’s Eve-themed movies such as “When Harry Met Sally,” “New Year’s Eve” and “An Affair to Remember,” or take turns watching each other’s favorite movies.
5. Make Resolutions Together
Talking about your dreams over a night like New Year’s Eve can do wonders for your relationship. Share your resolutions while cooking together or roasting marshmallows in the fire pit or taking a bubble bath. If you have been a couple for a while, consider setting goals together and making a shared vision board to help you stay on the same page.
6. Cook Something Special
Cooking together is a sensual activity for couples and a fun way to spend New Year’s Eve. The creative process, the attention to detail, the colors, aromas and flavors—cooking engages all of your senses. Search online for something you have never cooked before, or cook your favorite foods. Start with a fancy appetizer and end with a yummy dessert. And don’t forget to splurge on the best champagne you can buy.
7. Take a Day or Weekend Trip
Add excitement and romance to your New Year’s holiday by breaking your routine and embarking on an adventure with your partner. Go on a day-long road trip or spend the weekend in a cabin in the woods, a nice hotel, retreat spa or Airbnb in a new place or somewhere you both love. The point is to reconnect with each other away from the usual distractions, so turn off your phones!
8. Stay in Bed
What can be more intimate than spending a cozy evening in bed with your partner, pampering each other? You can reminisce about the ending year and make plans for the coming year, or you can forget about the past and the future and focus solely in the present moment. So dim the lights, give each other massages, sip on champagne and ring in the New Year truly together.
9. Go for a Midnight Stroll
Choose a nice area and go for a walk, maybe around the town square, park, around your neighborhood or nearby lake. Go anywhere where you can walk safely and have a relaxing conversation with your partner. If your town or city is hosting a fireworks show, head over to that area.
10. Recreate Your First Date
Remember your first date? On New Year’s Eve you can do more than remember it: You can recreate it. Go back to the same place where you met for that date, and do the same things, order the same meals or drinks. That first date must have been special if you’re still together.
11. Splurge on a Fancy Restaurant
You know that classy restaurant you wish you could afford? You may not be able to eat there every weekend, but on New Year’s Eve you deserve an extraordinary culinary experience with your partner. Plan ahead and make a reservation. Search your wardrobe for a fancy outfit or go shopping. If you can afford it, go all the way and hire a limo.
12. Make a Time Capsule
Few occasions are fit for a time capsule, and New Year’s Eve is one of them. Gather some meaningful items that commemorate the special times you’ve shared as a couple throughout the year(s), put them in a metal or plastic box, seal the box tightly and bury it in the ground to be unearthed at a later date. This process is fun and an opportunity to focus on the good times you’ve had together.
13. Go on a Scavenger Hunt
Write your New Year’s Eve relationship wishes and promises in small pieces of paper and put them inside small containers to hide around the house or apartment for your partner to find. Include clues to guide your partner throughout the scavenger hunt. Consider expanding the hunt outdoors or all over the city to places that are significant to you as a couple.
14. Attend a New Year’s Eve Ball
If a quiet, intimate night at home isn’t for you, consider going to a formal New Year’s Eve ball in the city. For centuries, balls have been romantic events where men and women could meet, whether coupled up or looking for love. So get dolled up, put on your dancing shoes and pretend you’re Cinderella and the prince—if only for one night.
If you’re looking for romance on New Year’s Eve beyond the midnight kiss, you will find it in any of the options above. Whether you decide to cuddle in bed, camp outside or go to a ball, as long as you’re focused on enjoying each other, it will be an affair to remember.