Quick Tour Around The World: 10 Free iPhone Apps for a More Romantic Valentine’s Day

February 14, love it or hate it, is just around the corner. Valentine’s Day is yet another holiday that has been over-marketed and over-commercialized, judging by the onslaught of pink hearts and red roses, but if you have someone in your life to profess your love to, you won’t mind a little visit from Cupid this year.
If you’re planning a special night, the following 10 free apps can help you take your romance game to the next level. And even if you aren’t presently in a relationship, Valentine’s Day is good excuse to tell someone that they’re special. C’mon, you can break out the warm fuzzies, at least for one day.

1. Valentine RADIO

As you get ready for your Valentine’s Day festivities, you can set the mood with some romantic music. Valentine RADIO is a compilation of 20+ radio stations from around the country and streams the music directly to your phone so you can get your Luther Vandross, Barry White and slow jam fix.

2. Valentine Photo Free -- Picture With Love

If you want to demonstrate your love in more visual ways, you can send a custom-made Valentine’s Day photo that you personally designed. The Valentine Photo Free app lets you personalize photos with cutesy images like hearts, swirly designs and presents. You can e-mail your creation to the lucky recipient or post it on a social network to publicly declare your love.

3. Be Mine Lite

Be Mine Lite is another Valentine’s Day card-making app, but rather than decorate photos, this one lets you choose from a number of templates to create you custom card. You can add a whole slew of visual effects –- like hearts, whimsical swirls, flowers –- and declare your love. There is also a paid version for $0.99 that offers a wider variety of backgrounds and effects.

4. California Blooms

If you’re more of a traditionalist and prefer to go the rose route, California Blooms is a great app for ordering that beautiful bouquet on the go. The app features gorgeous photos of the variety of bouquets they sell, as well as information on the care and handling of roses, and California Blooms’ eco-friendly growing process. The company is so confident in the quality of its roses that it guarantees your satisfaction or your money back.

5. Candy Valentines Hearts Free

No Valentine’s Day is complete without those little, all-too-familiar candy conversation hearts. With this app, you can add anyone’s name to the “I ♥” message and send the image to the lucky recipient. If you’d like to pay for the full version ($0.99), you can create your own entire message and have more options for background designs and colors.

6. Cook's Illustrated

You know the expression “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” Well another to consider is “The way to a woman’s heart is by cooking her dinner.” Yes, it’s that simple. The Cook’s Illustrated app tries to make it even easier. Featuring 50 of the magazine’s best recipes (and complementary videos for each), this app will provide you with the perfect meal for a romantic evening.

7. Say I Love You

If you really want to impress your special someone, how about whipping out “I love you” in a different language? This app provides simple translations of these three special words in a large variety of languages. So if you want to learn to say it in Indonesian (Saya cinta padamu) or Ukrainian (Ya tebe kahayu), or a host of other languages, now you can.

8. Love Horoscopes

Gather your daily horoscope and your forecast for love with this app. It shows you a three-day range (yesterday, today and tomorrow), provides lucky numbers and also offers a view of how likely you are to achieve success in attributes like wellness, creativity, money, work and more.

9. Love♥

As you’re professing your deepest feelings, you can mix in profound quotes with the help of the Love♥ app: A compilation of beautiful sayings about the magic of love. Quotes include: “Within you I lose myself. Without you I find myself wanting to become lost again.” What a way to sweep someone off his or her feet!