There is such a high level of importance placed on finding the “right” partner these days that a wave of different dating services have opened up to allow people to try and find someone. Among these services are several that enable the individual to “vet” possible suitors before they actually go on a date, the theory being that you can find out in advance if you have enough in common to make dating worthwhile. Of these methods, one of the most popular is “speed dating”. This is, in short, a way of meeting several potential suitors in one night for a controlled period of time (from three to five minutes, usually).

In the course of a speed dating evening, depending on the turnout, a person can meet anything from a few to around twenty people in whom they might be interested. In theory, for a mixed-gender speed dating event, there should be an equal number of men and women, and the attendees of a particular gender will all be sat at fixed tables. They will then be visited in turn by possible dating partners, and have a short amount of time to chat about whatever interests them. At the close of each “visit”, an individual will either put a tick or a cross next to the name of their “date”. The following day they will feed their responses into the speed-dating website, and any coupling that gave each other a tick will then be able to arrange another date. From that point, it is all up to them.