Valentine’s Day has a habit of announcing itself loudly, roses everywhere, candle-lit restaurants, and the low-grade panic of needing a date. Galentine’s Day, by contrast, belongs to the women who’ve seen you cry in taxi cabs, hype you up in bathroom mirrors, and talk you out of bad decisions or at least stay on the phone while you make them.
Pop culture has always understood this. The girls holding court over cosmos. Best friends falling out and finding their way back. Women growing older together and proving, quietly and convincingly, that friendship might be the great love story after all. Galentine’s Day isn’t about perfect tablescapes or themed pyjamas. It’s about choosing to spend time with people who’ve witnessed the chaos and never walked away.
Here are six ways to spend the day with the people who already feel like home.
Cue the Chorus and the Chaos
Build bingo cards around iconic Bollywood songs, actors, and tropes, then slide straight into karaoke. Early-2000s hits are non-negotiable. Stock up on old-school snacks and commit fully by dressing up as your favourite characters and belting out their songs with a hairbrush mic firmly in hand. For one night, let your living room become a stage where everyone gets their moment in the spotlight.
Let the Friendship Bloom
Stop waiting for a half-hearted situationship to bring you flowers. Go to your local market instead. Buy armfuls of blooms, lay them out across the table, and make bouquets for one another. It’s tactile, creative, and quietly intimate. Waking up to flowers by your bedside chosen and arranged by someone who knows you is its own kind of love letter.
A Killer Night In
Host a murder mystery night at home with assigned roles and dramatic accusations. Pour drinks, lean into the theatrics, and let everyone play detective. It’s immersive, playful, and far more fun than another movie night.
Booked For Bliss
Treat yourselves to a spa day in whatever form makes sense. That might mean a weekend away with friends, robes on, steam rooms booked, long lunches, phones left behind. Or it could be the at-home version: massages arranged, face masks ready, candles lit, playlists playing, nowhere to be. From affordable treats to full indulgence, a spa day is simply about slowing down and switching off together.
For the Joy of Old Clothes and New Stories
Go thrifting as a group and give yourselves permission to be ridiculous. Try things purely for entertainment, buy pieces that feel absurd or oddly promising, then spend the afternoon upcycling them together. There’s something grounding about clothes that have lived a life before you and something even better about giving them a new chapter, stitched with laughter and shared memories.
Sealed With Love (and Inside Jokes)
This one is for every kind of gal pal, the ones who’ve been there since the beginning and the ones you met somewhere along the way. Write down shared memories, private jokes, predictions, or small notes to your future selves. Seal them in envelopes and agree to open them next year. It’s less about nostalgia and more about intention: a quiet promise to keep choosing one another, year after year.
In a culture that insists on romance being performative, Galentine’s Day offers something quieter and far more sustaining. It honours the women who have watched you evolve, held you steady, and loved you through every version of yourself. At its core, the day is less about celebration than recognition of the friendships that have shaped you, anchored you, and endured without condition. The ones that never needed an occasion, only time.
