Recreating Our First Dates In Austin

Nate and I just celebrated our five year wedding anniversary. Rather than checking out a new Austin restaurant, we decided to spend the day hopping around Austin and re-visiting the places where we made our very first impressions of each other. It was a fun day!

^Why is there “Super Moss” behind us? Because we stopped at a garden center in the middle of the date and looked at plants for our yard. Haha. Friends, that’s how you know you’re officially Old and Boring..

Ever since this little one entered our lives in 2019, both Nate and I have stopped being late night people. We’re up early and we go to bed early. So Nate’s parents came over early in the day to watch the boys, and we left to enjoy brunch, coffee, an early movie, and a few other stops.

Our very first date in 2014: Craft Pride on Rainey Street. It no longer exists (it closed in 2021), so we couldn’t recreate this date. But truly, I wasn’t too sad that we didn’t have to go to Rainey Street on the 5 year celebration. I’m not a big fan of that street these days (except for Bangers, Hotel Van Zandt, and Emmer & Rye.)

Nate says he remembers me wearing a black dress that had little slits in the sleeves. For the life of me I can’t remember ever owning a dress like that, ha!

Our second date: Drink.well on North Loop. This is such a fun spot! I remember getting to this date early and sitting in my car because I didn’t want to be sitting around alone inside…and then he parked and walked right next to my car window to go inside, and I was mortified he would see me just sitting alone in my car. (He didn’t.)

Our third date: Epicerie for a Sunday morning brunch. We started our five year anniversary celebration here! I’ve been back several times over the past few years, and the food is always phenomenal. I’m jealous of the folks who live in the nearby neighborhoods and can walk there for morning pastries. They’re outstanding.

Our fourth date: Alamo Drafthouse. This was back when there weren’t so many locations, so we ended up driving down to the Slaughter location because it was the only one that fit into our schedule. (Now that I’ve been to all of the Alamo locations, the Slaughter one is my favorite! The seats recline, and unlike the Mueller location, the seats at Slaughter lean aaaalll the way back.)

I remember that I was training for a marathon, so I told Nate I could meet up for a movie with him that night but I had to squeeze in a 7 mile run first. He beat me to the theater and so I asked him to pick out a beer for me. I asked for something “hoppy but not too heavy” and he chose a Dale’s Pale Ale. I told him that story last weekend and he remembered all of those exact same details!

For our five year anniversary we saw The Lost City and it was so funny! Funnier than I expected. Sandra Bullock just gets me every time.

Our fifth date: Whip In. Nate vetoed going here for our 5 year anni because it’s he says feels it has changed quite a bit recently and it’s not the same quality it was back then. (I haven’t been recently so I really can’t say, but we had plenty of other options!) I remember loving it as one of our early date spots. We went on a busy weeknight and got beers and sat outside drinking them and talking forever.

Our sixth date: Brew & Brew. I had just finished a late night rehearsal in grad school, and Nate was wrapping up a late night work session. We met up for a beer, and he walked me back to my parked car in east Austin and kissed me for the first time!

This time, we went in the afternoon and got a few pours of beers that looked interesting. I asked Nate to pick out something that looked fun, and he chose a double IPA, a pilsner, and a dark tart cherry sour.

A later date (our 8th or 9th maybe?): Odd Duck + a show at Zach Theatre. I remember snapping a picture at Odd Duck and posting it to social media. It was our “Facebook official” photo, haha.

I’ve been back to this restaurant countless times since then, and I never get tired of it.

Have you ever recreated earlier dates? I think it was really fun to go around and share stories and impressions that we remember from long ago. The hard thing (for me) was spending one of our rare and valuable dates going to places we’ve already been when we both also looooove trying out new places.

PS: a pretty epic first anniversary. It was so fun!

Happy Monday, friends !