Have you ever heard of Grouper?

 I first heard about Grouper a couple months after KC and I broke up. One of my girlfriends told me the premise and that when I was ready to start dating again, she suggested we try it. Here's the low down on it:

            Grouper is defined as a social club that sets up drinks between two groups of friends. One girl rounds up two of her girlfriends to go meet with three guys who are all friends. You are assigned a concierge person who takes care of all the details for you. The concierge chooses the three guys you go out with, where you get your drinks at, and even covers the first round of drinks. They take one girl from the group and reviews their Facebook profile/interests, and the short survey the girl took. Once this is looked at, she is matched up with one of the guys in the group. This is to hopefully have at least one successful match between the group of six. Each person pays $22 to go on the Grouper. You're not told any of the names of the people participating or what they look like or even where you're having the date! The concierge person sends you the time and place of where it's going down the night before. You show up at that time, tell them the name that the reservation is under (usually under the female's name who was matched in the group).

I participated in my first Grouper a few weeks ago. Going into it I wasn't sure what to expect. I'd heard success stories and horror stories. I was just keeping my expectations low, and only wishing to at least have a decent time. It's not realistic to think that you'll meet the love of your life on this thing, but I guess it's possible. With that being said, I was totally ok with not connecting romantically with any of these guys. I just didn't want to deal with Dbags or guys who couldn't converse. My only hope for the experience was that these guys would be funny and could engage in some good conversation. When our concierge lady emailed us the details the day before, I immediately received a text from one of my girlfriends. "The place that were supposed to go to has been closed since December..I'm going to email the concierge back" I then responded with "How did she make the reservation then if the place has been closed. This seems kind of shady" my other friend then piped in with "We are not going there. That place looks like where they would find my dead, murdered body". Luckily we got it all straightened out and our concierge lady said she would get us our new location by the next afternoon (just mere hours before the date!). We also told her which neighborhoods we would like it to be in since we weren't a fan of the fact that she was trying to send us to SoDo in the first place.

The next afternoon we received the updated location. Terra Plata up on Capitol Hill. I had never been to this place, and trying new restaurants is one of my favorite things to do, so I was looking forward to having the date there. Myself and one of the other girls carpooled up to Terra Plata together because we didn't want to end up going into it alone! Our other friend had to meet us up there due to some work function that she was at until right before the date time. As we walked into the restaurant and gave the host our name, he pointed to a table centrally located in the building. The long, wooden table he pointed to was half full, the male half of the grouper date. My friend and I made our way over and introduced ourselves. The three guys appeared at face value as normal. So far so good. It would only be determined as the time went on if they were as normal as they appeared. Our other friend arrived minutes later, we all ordered our drinks, and the date officially was off the ground. For the next couple hours there was conversation between me and the guy sitting across from me which would then shift to a conversation with the guy sitting next to me. At times we would all have a conversation as a group. I laughed quite a bit during our date and I realized this while it was occurring. Which in turn to me meant that it had been a successful first date back in to this crazy dating world. There might have not been some instant love connection with any of these guys, but they were all productive, decent members of society-who could make me laugh.

I would do Grouper again, but I think the one thing I would change is: the places where the dates take place need to have round tables! I didn't even get the chance to talk to one of the guys on the date because he was all the way at the other end of the table from me. I wasn't completely bothered by that though because he was short and had the same name as my ex boyfriend. I think it was meant to be that way. Ha!


**I was in no way compensated for my views or opinions on Grouper. I am merely sharing my experiences to help those out there that may want to know about such a dating service.**