by Michelle Boudin

After an attention-grabbing stint on the 28th season of The Bachelor, Lexi Young found herself back in Atlanta and single – and not loving the dating apps meant to help her find love. So she decided to get people together for an in-person dating event and was stunned at the response.

“I got off the show and I had been in relationships, literally up until the show,” she says. “So I downloaded the apps for the first time in years and I just remember sitting at home thinking there’s no way this is my only way to meet someone. I put out a flyer for an event in Atlanta that was just really selfishly mostly for me. I wanted to see who’s single in Atlanta.”

More than 1,200 people showed up, convincing Young to create Dating In The Wild, an in-person dating event company. They’ve since hosted nearly 200 events and expanded to New York, Nashville, then launched in Charlotte this month. The gatherings are a mix of speed dating and parties that rely heavily on choosing the right venues.

“When you go on a first date, you don’t want to walk in somewhere with fluorescent lighting,” Young explains. “You want more of a moody, sexy cocktail lounge. So that’s what we go for in terms of our larger events. With speed dating, we’ve had so many different restaurants sponsor those, and we were looking for the same in Charlotte. We just need enough space to hold 100 people.”

They also host cocktail parties for big groups where In The Wild teammates circulate to help break the ice, and smaller dinners for groups of six where people are handpicked to attend based on mutual interests. “Those have been at many different restaurants across our markets, and you have a two-hour dinner, and at the two-hour mark, you get a text with who your match is at that table. We’ve had a lot of restaurants kind of knocking on our door to have us host those because it’s great exposure if people haven’t been there and then they end up spending quite a bit of money because they end up eating and drinking.”

A similar group, Connecting Charlotte, has been hooking up singles in the queen city since December 2024, when founder Nicki Davis was working remotely and struggling to meet people. “Everything was remote, finding friends was remote, dating was remote, and I was behind a screen all the time, and I know a lot of people were feeling that as well,” she says. “The goal was always to get people in person and actually connecting, but in a very genuine and intentional way.”

Connecting Charlotte regularly hosts a “Singles Showcase” at Goldie’s in South End, where friends pitch each other to the audience, and they’re also bringing back speed dating. “That’s one of our most popular events,” Young says. “People compare that to an in-person dating app. We use a matchmaking tech, so the intentionality is definitely there with who you’re meeting.”

Attendees fill out a profile beforehand and a matchmaking tech pairs people with the best nine to 12 people. Then people go on a six-minute date nine to 12 times.

They do four- to six events a month including socials at places like Hoppin’ In Southend and Davis says every event has sold out since she started.

“I love to work with the locally owned bars and restaurants,”Davis says.” We’re a small business so we try to, of course, support as many other small businesses as we can. venues, vendors, all the above, at our events.”

Goldie’s in South End has played host to a series of dating events.

“We’ve always believed that live music and great hospitality have a way of bringing people together naturally,” Goldie’s GM Karlie Lothamer says. “Hosting in-person dating events, as well as other fun interactive pop ups, feels like a natural extension of that. In a world where so much connection happens through a screen, it’s refreshing to create a space where people can meet face-to-face, share a conversation, and enjoy an experience together.”

Most of the events tend to cater to people in their 20s and 30s, but Nicole Sodoma— who calls herself a marriage-loving divorce attorney — recently started throwing events that attract people in their 40s and 50s. The founder of Sodoma Law has so far taken over Crave Dessert Bar in Uptown twice for what she’s calling matchmaking events for people in a similar, somewhat challenging phase of life. She remarried a few years ago, but remembers how daunting it was to start dating again after divorce.

“You feel isolated, you don’t want to talk about it with your friends who haven’t experienced it or it becomes the topic of every conversation,” Sodoma says. “And so you’re looking for this safe space where it’s not the conversation. Being around people that are in that same season, it’s just a new fresh start opportunity. I didn’t even feel it necessary for people to connect and walk away with a date or a partnership. What I found most interesting was that people just wanted to connect and that it was a community they felt comfortable in.”

All the business owners can point to successful results from their events.

“We have several relationships, including one from our very first event that is still dating and that was well over a year now, and I know there are more and will be more,” Young says. “People just really want the in-person connection. They’re craving community in so many different ways and I think dating is a pillar of that larger theme and a total shift that we’re seeing across the United States and elsewhere. At our events, people end up starting conversations with someone that they may have never swiped on.”

In fact, she was recently invited to celebrate a couple her company helped connect.

“I flew into Atlanta two weeks ago for an engagement for a couple that met at my event a year and a half ago, and they both said that they never would have swiped on each other ever, on Hinge,” Young says. “I think it just goes to show that the apps is, it’s such a snippet of who you are as a person, where meeting in real life, you really get to feel that chemistry and you can’t feel that through a screen. It’s been awesome, really, really successful and fun.”

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