BTS: Playing Cupid

An interview with Claire on hosting a party with intention

Written by

Valerie Henderson

On February 8th, Claire, Samira, and Fiona threw the ultimate romantic mixer—sorry, Mixxerrrrr 😘—at Seventh Heaven Bar & Karaoke in Bushwick. 168 guests answered a playful pre-event questionnaire when they RSVP’d, which set the stage for intentional intermingling. I caught up with Claire to get the inside scoop on what went into planning the event, how she pulled it off, and what it’s like to be responsible for 84 potential happily ever afters. 💘

Photos courtusey of @benli.ig
Valerie: So, how were people matched?

Claire: We had a spreadsheet that we pulled from the questionnaire and based off of everybody's responses and the general vibe that they gave, we went through and matched each person with someone we thought they could talk to a lot. We had a success rate of, like, 4%. But, you know, a lot of friends were made and that's all that really matters.

V: When you were doing the pairing, did you feel like a hopeless romantic or a mad scientist?

C: Definitely a mix of both. I think towards the end it was giving mad scientist. There was a lot of data to pass through. We ended up searching for keywords in their responses like “gallery” and pairing people based off of shared interests.

V: What questions did you ask on the questionnaire?

C: We had some general demographic questions, but the main ones were

Describe what you are looking for in your ideal match
What is your love language?
What is your ideal date night?

V: Walk me through the event now, people show up— how did they find their match?

C: So originally we wanted to do a more structured approach but it was at a bar and the space was just not really allowing for that. We ended up having a table set up at the beginning with name tags and people put a heart next to their name. If you were single, it would be an empty heart, if you were taken it would be filled in. And then we released the spreadsheet with everyone’s matches an hour before

V: The spreadsheet with everyone’s answers?

C: Yeahhh it was a bit controversial. Samira was like, I don't think we should have done that and then Fiona was like, no, it's fine, no one cares and they're here for a reason.

I guess my stance is, at the end of the day y'all wanted to do this. And if you want to find love you gotta be open to sharing.

C: I also think because of the unstructured-ness it ended up becoming a party where everyone was mingling with everyone. Some people were looking for their matches and they actually met them but for the most part it was just a fun and intimate party. It was snowing out, it was a good vibe.

V: So you said you had a 4% success rate. Can you tell me about this 4%?

C: I had two friends hit me up after asking for the Instagram of the person we matched them with. I think they’re gonna link with them separately

V: What was your biggest challenge while planning this event?

C: I would say the biggest challenge was getting a good ratio of of girls, guys and gays. Making sure that there was a pool for everybody.

V: If you had to describe the party’s energy in one word?

C: Loving. I think because everyone went into the event knowing it was a kind of mixer where you were supposed to talk to people, everybody was just so friendly and open.

V: That's so nice. I love that. I feel like parties should be more open in that way.

C: Yeah, you know, if you're not extroverted it can be hard to just go up to someone random at the bar, but the party’s intention called for that. By the end everyone was singing karaoke together.

V: So what inspired you to host this? Have you done something like this before?

C: No, it was our first time. We have so many single friends it was just a fun little job for us to match people that we know together. We were going back and forth like in theory, these people would be soo good together.