September Date Night: Restaurant Tour

I've recently created a new goal for myself: to make an effort to have one special "date night" at least once a month.   And I don't just mean going out to dinner on the weekend, but making a special night for you and your date to look forward to - an occasion to get dressed up, a new experience to enjoy, or a time to spend one-on-one time with one of your favorite people.  These dates don't necessarily need to be with your significant other, either.  It can be with any one person in particular, whether it's actually your significant other, your best friend, your mom, your brother, or grandma.  To keep myself to my promise, I'm going to do one post a month with a new date idea and what you should wear for it.

For September, my special date night idea was to do a self-made restaurant tour with my wonderful boyfriend, Matt.  To celebrate two years of being together, we planned a tour of grabbing an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert at three different locations.  It didn't quite go to plan (we ended up missing dessert), but the idea was fun and we both used the occasion to get a bit more dressed up.

First stop we made was at one of our favorite bars for a cocktail and an appetizer, and then headed across the street from the bar to a new Italian restaurant for us to try.  It was the perfect combination of a place we love to go and a new experience to try out.  We ended up taking our time at dinner so it ended up being pretty late when we were done and, since we were so full anyways, we decided to skip out on finding a dessert.  Next time we'll be sure to pace ourselves a bit more.

A quick pre-dinner selfie

For my attire, I decided to go with an off the shoulder, suede-like burnt orange mini dress.  Because it's September, I wanted to lean more towards the autumnal colors, but since it was in the upper 70's when we went out I needed to wear something that wouldn't be too warm, making this dress the perfect option.  I paired it with my strappy black sandals with gold buckles, a caramel, black, and white clutch, and a gold bangle.  I'm thinking this outfit would also be pretty with a simple gold necklace, but I didn't have the right one at home to put on.  Even without the necklace, this outfit felt dressy, yet comfortable, flirty, and feminine.

Dress: Brand is Ces Femme, purchased from Lillian Grace Boutique; Sandals: Audrey Brooke; Clutch: BP from Nordstrom

And since we didn't make it out for dessert, we made up for it the next day by grabbing ice cream from our favorite spot, Jeni's.  Sorry for not grabbing a photo of the ice cream itself, I was too excited and downed it all too quickly.  I did get this studly photo of Matt before we went inside though...

Let me know what your favorite date night activities are to do!