If you run a booking, appointment, or delivery form on your WordPress site, you’ve probably run into this problem: users can pick any date on your calendar field — including Sundays you’re closed, holidays you’re not working, or dates that are simply too soon to fulfill. Gravity Forms doesn’t include native date-restriction logic out of the box, so you need a dedicated date picker add-on to control exactly which dates are selectable.
In this guide, we’ll walk through how to restrict dates in Gravity Forms using the Date Picker for Gravity Forms plugin — covering minimum/maximum date ranges, custom date formats, and (with the Pro version) blocking specific weekdays and holiday dates.
Why Restrict Dates in Gravity Forms?
Unrestricted date fields create real business problems:
- Customers booking appointments on days you’re closed
- Delivery requests for dates that are physically impossible to meet
- Event registrations submitted after the event has already started
- Manual back-and-forth emails to correct invalid date selections
Restricting the date picker at the form level solves this before it becomes a support headache — the user simply can’t select an invalid date in the first place.
Setting Up the Date Picker Field
Install and activate Date Picker for Gravity Forms from the WordPress plugin repository. Once active, a new “Date Picker” field type appears inside the Gravity Forms editor under the Advanced Fields section. Drag it onto your form like any other field.
Free Features: Min & Max Date Restrictions
Open the field’s settings panel and you’ll find the core restriction options available on the free version:
1. Custom Date Format
Choose how the date displays to users — yy-mm-dd, dd/mm/yy, mm-dd-yy, and other common formats are supported, so the picker matches your audience’s regional expectations.
2. Minimum Date
Set a minimum selectable date — for example, “today” or “3 days from today” — so users can’t book something that needs to happen in the past or with impossible lead time.
3. Maximum Date
Cap how far into the future a user can book, useful for limiting bookings to a season, quarter, or fixed availability window.
These three settings alone solve the most common restriction: preventing past-date and too-far-future bookings on any appointment, delivery, or event form.
Pro Features: Disabling Specific Weekdays & Dates
For more granular control — like closing out weekends or blocking holidays — the Pro version adds:
Disable Specific Weekdays
Check off any day of the week (e.g. Saturday and Sunday) to remove it from the calendar entirely. Ideal for businesses that only operate on weekdays.
Disable Specific Dates
Block out individual dates or date ranges — holidays, maintenance windows, fully booked days — so they simply can’t be clicked in the calendar UI.
Active Dates Only
Flip the logic entirely: instead of blocking dates, define a specific list of available dates and disable everything else. This is useful for fixed-schedule events or limited-slot bookings.
Common Use Cases
- Appointment booking forms — block days the business is closed
- Event registration — restrict to the registration window only
- Delivery date selection — enforce minimum lead time and exclude non-delivery days
- Hotel/rental booking forms — limit to available date ranges
- Service scheduling — combine weekday restrictions with min/max dates for full control
Final Thoughts
Restricting dates in Gravity Forms doesn’t require custom PHP or JavaScript hacks — a dedicated date picker add-on handles min/max ranges out of the box, and unlocks weekday and specific-date blocking if you need finer control. For most booking and appointment use cases, this is the fastest way to stop invalid date submissions before they ever reach your inbox.