For the single person, it’s been a long-standing complaint that Vancouver’s dating scene is difficult.
And it’s for that reason a 29-year-old Vancouver woman has taken a unique approach to finding love. She’s launched a “slightly anonymous” dating incentive program website to help her find the man of her dreams.
The self-described sassy, creative lady has been tinkering around with the idea for awhile and decided the start of the New Year was a perfect time to try out her idea.
“You could say I have my sh*t together and I take pride in that,” she says on her website. “The dating scene is difficult here, and I am fed up with online profiles, Tinder, bars and other matchmaking services that just waste my time with men looking for hookups.”
Single for almost a year and a half and exhausted by the online dating scene, she says she talked over her idea with her friends and found when she mentioned matchmaking incentive prize packages peoples’ ears perked up.
Taking dating to the next level
That’s how she says she came up with a three-tiered system.
If a matchmaker sets her up with someone and they have five successful dinner dates, they’ll receive a prize pack worth $250 that includes gift cards, bottles of wine, concert tickets. The next level is worth $500 with a weekend trip away, designer shoes, handbag and iPad, and is achieved if it leads to her being in an exclusive relationship with your match.
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Then there’s the top tier and grand prize both for the matchmaker and the single lady. For finding her a match that results in an engagement, ‘cupid’ will get a destination vacation worth $2,000.
The value of each package has not been pulled out of thin air, this savvy single lady has done her research. When it came down to the dollar values, she based it on the fees someone would pay for a professional matchmaker.
In the end she figures it’s good value for her money.
The 29-year-old creative, who works in design, added up the money she’s spent over the years in her dating attempts — dating profile subscription fees, social club fees, matchmaking service fees and countless social mixer events — and feels her cash would be better spent getting personal referrals from friends and their circles.
“I’ve been thinking about it for awhile… and a lot of people who are in relationships say they met through friends or at a party or through a friend of a friend,” she told Global News.
“And my own circles already know I’m single and have been looking… And I thought how can I expand that circle [with people] that aren’t just random ones you meet online?”
And what kind of man is she looking for? Her website outlines it into two categories: personality (outgoing, adventurous, good sense of humour, professionally driven, loves animals) and attributes (between 29 and 40-years-old, career-minded and established, at least 6 feet tall with broad shoulders and build).
And before you think it, she does not believe this is a desperate attempt at finding love.
“I’ve done all the traditional ways of dating and it didn’t go anywhere… this is a difficult city to meet people and this seems like an interesting creative way to approach it.”
Having her fair share of blind dates, online dates and the like; she plans on exchanging a few emails with the matchmaker before heading out on her date but overall is “pretty open” to the whole experience.
“I’m a very creative ambitious person so just to sit and wait by the sidelines for it to happen doesn’t really suit who I am. So, let’s just grab it and go for it.”
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