Home » Crafty » 12 Months of Pre-Planned Dates: Creative Wedding Gift Idea

12 Months of Pre-Planned Dates: Creative Wedding Gift Idea

FREE Printable 12 Months of Pre-Planned Dates Mini-Book | Give the gift of quality time as a creative and meaningful wedding or engagement gift with this free printable download. Help make a couple's first year of marriage one for the record books! The 14 page PDF Printable Pack comes with everything you need to carry out this gift idea plus many more!

After six years of marriage, one thing Mark and I have learned to be of incredible value to our relationship is spending intentional time together through date nights!  (Or date days.)

It doesn’t have to be anything fancy.  We don’t even have to leave home.  But carving out some quality time together on a regular basis has been a practice that has reaped innumerable benefits for us.

Like what?

It reminds us of what is most important.

It reaffirms that we are a priority to each other.

Plus, reading a book by the fire together or watching the sunset from the lifeguard stand refuels the soul after a busy day.  It’s worth making time for each other in this way even when the schedule says, “There’s no time.”

So, when an engagement party or wedding is on the horizon for a beloved couple, we like to pass on our love of date nights in the form of a tangible gift: a 12 Months of Pre-Planned Dates Mini-Book.

FREE Printable 12 Months of Pre-Planned Dates Mini-Book | Give the gift of quality time as a creative and meaningful wedding or engagement gift with this free printable download. Help make a couple's first year of marriage one for the record books! The 14 page PDF Printable Pack comes with everything you need to carry out this gift idea plus many more!

Thinking Closet regulars have seen this gem of a gift idea before.  The FREE printable has been downloaded by my email subscribers over 20,000 times!  (Yowza, that’s a lot of dates.)  And at the end of this post, you’ll get a chance to download it, too, dear reader.

But first, I wanted to give a glimpse into my process for putting together the 12 Months of Pre-Planned Dates Mini-Book as a wedding gift, and I’ll share my tips for how to do it so as to spark a couples’ creativity when planning their own dates.

Let’s dive in to the giftie goodness, shall we?

Step 1.  Print your mini-book pages

The first step is to decide which of three color schemes you’d like to work with, and note their page numbers.  You can choose from brilliant red, purple, or blue.

Then, print the pages you need on your printer’s highest quality photo settings.  For durability, I recommend printing on white cardstock.

This past week, I batched three different mini-book wedding gift projects into one sitting, so I used all three color schemes.

FREE Printable 12 Months of Pre-Planned Dates Mini-Book | Give the gift of quality time as a creative and meaningful wedding or engagement gift with this free printable download. Help make a couple's first year of marriage one for the record books! The 14 page PDF Printable Pack comes with everything you need to carry out this gift idea plus many more!

Step 2.  Cut out your mini-book pages

Using scissors or a paper-cutter, cut out your mini-book pages.

FREE Printable 12 Months of Pre-Planned Dates Mini-Book | Give the gift of quality time as a creative and meaningful wedding or engagement gift with this free printable download. Help make a couple's first year of marriage one for the record books! The 14 page PDF Printable Pack comes with everything you need to carry out this gift idea plus many more!

Step 3.  Assemble your mini-book pages

Next, you’ll assemble your mini-book pages in the order in which you would like them to appear.  There’s a lot of flexibility here, but here’s how I assemble them for wedding gifts:

1.  cover page: 12 Months of Pre-Planned Dates

FREE Printable 12 Months of Pre-Planned Dates Mini-Book | Give the gift of quality time as a creative and meaningful wedding or engagement gift with this free printable download. Help make a couple's first year of marriage one for the record books! The 14 page PDF Printable Pack comes with everything you need to carry out this gift idea plus many more!

2.  intro page: “for: ________ from: ________”

3.  blank page: here’s where I add a personal note to the couple from us, plus the date

Fun new "extras" in the FREE 12 Months of Dates Printable Pack: a blank mini-page and FOR and FROM page. Gotta personalize!

4.  instruction & inspiration pages: these were created specifically for wedding gifts and do all the splainin’ for you

FREE Printable 12 Months of Pre-Planned Dates Mini-Book | Give the gift of quality time as a creative and meaningful wedding or engagement gift with this free printable download. Help make a couple's first year of marriage one for the record books! The 14 page PDF Printable Pack comes with everything you need to carry out this gift idea plus many more!

5.  the page for the month after the current one, followed by the next 11 months

6.  wild card: this one can be redeemed at any time during the next 12 months

7.  the “Congrats” card: it feels like the perfect closing card

FREE Printable 12 Months of Pre-Planned Dates Mini-Book | Give the gift of quality time as a creative and meaningful wedding or engagement gift with this free printable download. Help make a couple's first year of marriage one for the record books! The 14 page PDF Printable Pack comes with everything you need to carry out this gift idea plus many more!

Step 4.  Create your divider pages

This step is purely optional, and I will say it is the most time-consuming, but I find that adding a decorative divider page in between each of the cardstock mini-book pages adds a lot of oomph to the finished look.

You could print off photos of the happy couple, cutting them to match the page size like I did for our friends Hannah and Ben.

12 Months of Pre-Planned Dates Mini Book: FREE Printable Pack. This makes for a fantastic wedding or engagement gift. Just create a blank book, use photos of the couple as dividers, and encourage them to plan out a year of dates TOGETHER.

Or you could simply use decorative scrapbook paper that matches your color scheme.  That’s what I did for this round of three wedding gifts.

Insert colorful paper in between your mini-cards for added whimsy!

I usually layer two or three kinds of scrapbook paper behind one of the mini-book pages and cut them out in bunches to save time.  Three sheets of seven varieties of scrapbook paper (21 total) will cover all 19 of the cardstock mini-pages with two leftover.

Once you’ve cut your divider pages, place them between the cardstock mini-book pages in one tall stack.

Step 5.  Hole-punch your mini-book pages

Now, it’s time to grab a hole-punch.  I like to work just two pages at a time (one cardstock page and one divider page).  I usually flip the hole-punch so it’s upside-down, so I can better use the circle as a guide.

FREE Printable 12 Months of Pre-Planned Dates Mini-Book | Give the gift of quality time as a creative and meaningful wedding or engagement gift with this free printable download. Help make a couple's first year of marriage one for the record books! The 14 page PDF Printable Pack comes with everything you need to carry out this gift idea plus many more!

Step 6.  Bind your mini-book

Bind your mini-book using a binder ring, string, or ribbon.  You can find the binder rings at most craft and hobby stores, as well as on *Amazon (affiliate link).

"You are loved." Just one of the many meaningful pages in the 12 Months of Dates mini-book. Download your FREE Printable Pack at thinkingcloset.com. Here's to the gift of quality time!

Optional Step 7.  Complete the first date

One way we like to help the couple get the ball rolling is to provide a cash gift card to treat them to their first date.  So, since I’ll be mailing these out in late October, their first date will be in November:

“Dinner & Date-Planning.  Use the enclosed gift card to enjoy a yummy meal on us, and plot out your next 11 months of dates!”

FREE Printable 12 Months of Pre-Planned Dates Mini-Book | Give the gift of quality time as a creative and meaningful wedding or engagement gift with this free printable download. Help make a couple's first year of marriage one for the record books! The 14 page PDF Printable Pack comes with everything you need to carry out this gift idea plus many more!

Keep in mind you don’t have to give a monetary gift in addition to the mini-book in order for it to be a meaningful.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again—golly, I even wrote a book on the subject:

It’s not about the money or time-invested or the creative resume.  It’s about the heart behind a gift.  {Click to tweet.}

And this is one of those heart-made gifts that holds potential to make a couple’s year—better yet, their marriage—one for the record books.

FREE Printable 12 Months of Pre-Planned Dates Mini-Book | Give the gift of quality time as a creative and meaningful wedding or engagement gift with this free printable download. Help make a couple's first year of marriage one for the record books! The 14 page PDF Printable Pack comes with everything you need to carry out this gift idea plus many more!

FREE Printable

The Printable Pack is available fo’ FREE as a gift to my newsletter subscribers.  It comes with alternate cover options for Friend Dates or Parent-Kid Dates, so everyone can play!

So, if you’d like to subscribe to receive more creative ideas right in your inbox along with this fab freebie, fill out your email in the box below or click HERE.

Happy giving!

*Full Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, meaning that if you make a purchase after clicking through, The Thinking Closet may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.  Thanks for helping to support this site!

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6 Comments

  1. Found you on Pinterest and can’t wait to see more of your thoughtful ideas and tips! I will be happy to make any purchases of supplies from your affiliate so I can make and share your fantastic ideas!

    1. Thank you for the warm words, Mary. Glad to have you along for the ride and hope you continue to find more inspiration as you mosey about my cozy little corner of the interwebs. The Thinking Closet door is always open to you!

  2. Seriously want to give this as a gift at our next wedding. It’s so meaningful! Plus, I love all the date suggestions in the beginning too. I’m going to try and find the subscriber email with this printable pack!

  3. Lauren, you are the queen of thoughtful gifts! I love this idea and can personally speak to the benefits of using it with close friends and family too. People across the world are making time for each other because of your sweet and gentle reminders. Big hugs, CoCo

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