Ask if she wants to get coffee or a drink, and see what she leans towards?

I tend to see coffee as a "pre-date." Not a bad thing, but not particularly daring or dashing or romantic.

And if you both were drinking at the party, you can probably just go ahead and ask her out to the bar.

Meet her for coffee, then slip some alcohol in her latte? Best of both worlds.

Are those the only choices? Could you invite her out for lunch or dinner instead? Or is that too much? My last first date was a movie and then dinner, and that didn't seem too heavy.

What kind of party was it? If it was a rather moderate cocktail-y party with interesting conversations etc, I'd say ask her out for coffee. If it was a little bit loud, maybe more casual, I'd say pub.

If you're really fifty-fifty on it, I'd say pub, but go to a quieter place, and not too late.

occhiblu: Yeah, that's probably the best thing. I'm not sure I know this person well enough to be dashing or daring or romantic?

agropyron: Well I did ask a girl out for coffee once but when she got there she said we should split a bottle of wine instead. Truly the best of both worlds as the same result, without surreptitious drink spiking!

JanetLand: I could... I just said I would like to meet up with her again at some point.

Specklet: It was moderate but casual, if that helps. Really more of a small get-together where I knew only the host. I think a quiet pub earlier would probably be my ideal situation.

Well here is the honest truth. She lives on the other side of town and I don't know any coffee places there or in-between. Unsurprisingly, I do know several pubs. So maybe I could suggest one of those and say that I would be open to coffee if she knew a good place.

You've already met her, and you liked her enough to get her number? Forget the pub or coffee, take her to dinner.

And be sure and kiss her, dammit! These kids today . . . .

Seconding TPS, actually. And I didn't mean that non-coffee dates were required to be dashing or daring or romantic -- my main issue with them, actually, is that they can be so ambiguous as to be confusing. Is it a date? Is it not a date? Worrying about whether it's a date makes it awkward enough that it becomes not a date most of the time.

I recommend sushi - preferably one of those places with the conveyor belt that brings your food to you. It's casual enough that there's little pressure associated with "going out to dinner" yet clearly you are taking her out to dinner. And do, by all means, pay. Sushi's cheap, and it makes you look classy.

Why not simply ask her out for punch? It seems like the obvious answer.

I third TPS. I think the connection was already made. Might as well swing for the fences.

Buy some of this too, just in case. Increasing the time is important because once they know that you can go the distance and then some, things go even better.

At the risk of sounding overly bossy/nosy: punch, it seems like a lot of your questions here are due to some lack of real "date" chemistry between you and various women. It may totally be worth pushing yourself a bit more -- not totally outside your comfort level, but just closer to its edge -- because it's hard to get unambiguous sparks when everyone's playing it safe.

Which is not to say that pushing your limits a bit always fixes bad chemistry -- it doesn't -- but if you already think there's something there, why not go for it? I think a lot of the time it's the hesitations and overthinking and half-measures that kill sparks, rather than pushing too fast.

Which is to say: Skip the wishy-washy coffee and go for dinner, or at the very least drinks.

Woo hoo, very well said, occhiblu!

The pub. Drink of the ale. Order pub food. Laugh about how bad it is (or rave about how good). Be fun. Have fun.

Occhiblu, why weren't you my cool older cousin or something when I was 15?

That is to say: punch, occhiblu's advice would have saved me a lot of heartache. You would do well to consider her words.

Someone once invited me for "coffee or a drink" -- luckily it was winter, and I suggested we do both at once, and go someplace where we could get some sort of delicious boozy coffee concoction.

That was nice.

occhiblu: Eek. OK, I'll think about it. The thing is, students don't really seem to go on dates here. They seem to randomly hook up somehow. So even asking someone out for coffee seems like a big step (and has caused girls I have asked to really freak out when I thought of it as no big deal). It was different in the last place I lived.

I'm not really sure why I seem to have so little chemistry with people. Is it like this for everyone else or is this my fault somehow? No one else here seems to need to make the sorts of big gestures you are suggesting in order to find chemistry with someone.

The thing is, students don't really seem to go on dates here. They seem to randomly hook up somehow. So even asking someone out for coffee seems like a big step (and has caused girls I have asked to really freak out when I thought of it as no big deal). It was different in the last place I lived.

I was in the EXACT same MFing position when I was in college. After graduation I discovered it was the environment, not my behavior that was making it so weird.

No one else here seems to need to make the sorts of big gestures you are suggesting in order to find chemistry with someone.

What the hell are you talking about? Dating is hard for EVERYONE. Good chemistry doesn't just fall in your lap. You have to work at it- work at being charming, work at being engaging, work at being outgoing. At least I do. Do you know how many bad dates I've suffered through, and chalked up to practice? Asking someone to dinner is not that big of a gesture. Suck it up and do it. Then go and try your best to make it work. Mind over matter. No more whining from you, sir.

/in a bad mood today

Can you do something unambiguously romantic that's not quite dinner? Walks through scenic cemeteries, picnics, something?

I didn't date much in college, and those dates were mostly parties, so... yeah. I would assume that does throw a bit of a wrench into things.

But what TPS is saying is true. You can't just randomly wander around and assume something's going to fall into your lap. You have to expend the effort not only in asking someone out, but in really engaging with that person during the date. For me, I find it kind of hard to really engage with a new person over coffee -- like I said, it seems really wishy-washy and then I worry that I have coffee breath and people are always coming and going which makes the whole thing seem really temporary, when for me a good date involves wanting to spend foreeeeeeeever with this person just talking, and I really believe that anything involving paper cups is not condusive to creating chemistry.

It doesn't have to be dinner. But it should be something planned and special that heightens your senses, and hers, and doesn't just feel like a "I have to meet this random person in this random place" thing. A special place could be a concert or a park or a perfect view or the ultimate-perfect-want-to-stay-there-forever coffeehouse, but it just can't be a Starbucks, or anything that could resemble a Starbucks. And when I hear "Let's get coffee," I think Starbucks even if we're not going to Starbucks, and I immediately flip out of romantic mode.

(Though that could also be because the coffee-date place of choice my freshman year of college was a frickin' AU BON PAIN, for god's sake, which may in fact be the least romantic place on earth.)

(Also, agro, ha! I love the thought of being the cool older cousin. I do my best being the cool older sister, though, which I hope my brother appreciates. And actually, "Oh, just go for it already!" is usually my advice to him, too.)

For me, coffee is never Starbucks.

Perhaps the dating world is more sophisticated in New York and San Francisco.

That better not be some sort of lame excuse. Or I will come over there and SO HELP ME....

Ah, just skip all of it -- go ahead and propose matrimony. It'll save time. :)

:) TPS

Maybe I should expand a little. A lot of the dating advice seen on MeFi/MeCha is somewhat forward. I think the kissing on the first date thread is a classic example. It seems the consensus there is that you have to, or you'll seem uninterested. When I told my local female friends this, the responses were along the lines of "I hate it when guys try to do that!" "You should really wait until at LEAST the second date and probably the third," and "I wouldn't like that."

But hell, maybe they don't know what they would like. I mean a couple of these people have been known let themselves be kissed on the first date, although not without some soul-searching afterwards.

Then there's my own experience, where I just think of all the times I've screwed something up by coming on too strong. I know I've messed things up by not being forward enough too, but those memories are more distant. Maybe I never did come on too strong; maybe things were doomed with those people from the start, and if it were really going to work, it wouldn't matter.

Anyway, I obviously appreciate the perspective here, which is frequently quite different from my offline female friends. Otherwise I wouldn't keep coming back.

Also: After graduation I discovered it was the environment, not my behavior that was making it so weird.

While that's reassuring, I still have to figure out how to deal with this environment since I'm not out of the woods yet.

I will try to come up with something creative to do instead of coffee.

Can I ask where you are, or at least what kind of place you're in? From your descriptions, I'm beginning to imagine a Mormon junior college in rural Utah. :-)

I'm in a small city in the UK.

Ahhhhhhhh.

From everything I've seen, dating rules in the UK are completely ridiculously different from dating rules in the US. You may firmly disregard any and all advice I've given you until you come to the States, at which point there will be a quiz.

Seriously, I don't know if you're an expat and that's why you're confused (I *hated* dating when I lived in Italy, because I just couldn't quite figure out the rules that everyone took for granted), or if even Brits get confused by how to date in England, but maybe there's a more England-specific forum that could help? I understand that people are people no matter where you are, but dating customs are *so* location specific in so many ways that getting more local advice might be good.

English girl here and as someone who consistently freaks out if people ask me to dinner (all that pressure! so stuffy! who even dates anyway?) I would definitely say that a pub is better than a coffee shop.

Of course this may be more London-related but to me a pub is far more casual than a coffee shop, alcohol is really very helpful on a first date and the atmosphere of a pub is usually much better than the sterile feeling you get from so many coffee places.

But the easiest way to ask a girl out? Invite her to a party. Seems casual, there'll be alcohol and there's no sleaze involved.

Invite her to a party ... and there's no sleaze involved.
You are obviously going to the wrong parties.

I apologise, I should ammend that: and there's no sleaze involved the extent of which she'll suspect before she gets there.