Did you ever wonder how matchmaking worked before the internet?
This weekend, the most famous matchmaking festival in the world takes place in Ireland. The festival hails back to the matchmaking tradition in rural Ireland, where matches between singles were made by travelling salesmen who knew all the singles in the country and introduced them to each other. Unfortunately for those seeking love, there was no internet and no be2 to make matchmaking infinitely easier. Instead, the singles had to travel from all over the country to meet at festivals, where the matchmakers, lots of dancing (and drinking) smoothed the path of love for single men and women.
The largest of these was the matchmaking festival in Lisdoonvarna. The town sports many a resident matchmaker, the annual Matchmaking Festival and even the Matchmaker Bar. Today, the matchmaking festival is the biggest singles festival in Europe, although most visitors aren’t there to search for love. Instead, people gather to dance and have fun.
After all, you can find the love of your life at an online matchmaking website without travelling to Lisdoonvarna. Nevertheless, the history of the matchmaking festival gives an insight into the complications of finding love before the advent of the internet (thank you, Internet, we love you!)

The 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love

At this time forty years ago, in San Francisco people from all walks of life were wearing flowers in their hair, dancing in the streets and embracing the Hippie ideals of love, peace and tolerance. It was the summer of 1967, the Summer of Love. Up to 100,000 people of all ages flocked to the district Haight-Ashbury, where a social utopia was being built. (more…)