So my intention is to put out dates that would look like the following:
Today, August 28
Tomorrow, August 29
Friday, August 30
...etc
The issue
Based on the documentation about NSDateFormatter I think that the only solution for your issue is to present two date strings for the days you would like to be relatively shown. You should keep in mind that in different languages there are differences in the relative dates. From the documentation:
If a date formatter uses relative date formatting, where possible it replaces the date component of its output with a phrase—such as “today” or “tomorrow”—that indicates a relative date. The available phrases depend on the locale for the date formatter; whereas, for dates in the future, English may only allow “tomorrow,” French may allow “the day after the day after tomorrow".
I believe that if you define that you're going to show relatively for example yesterday, today and tomorrow you can use 2 NSDateFormatters. With the first one you will show the relative value and with the second you will display the actual date. For the non-relative dates you will display only the non-relative value.