How to host a speed dating night

A speed dating night has a lot of small moving parts. Guests only notice the ones that go wrong.

This is a checklist for running one end to end, from the first ticket sold to the last results email. All of it works on paper. Where software helps with a chore, you'll find a short note on it.

Before the night

Work out your numbers

Start with the clock. At a mixed night, one side stays seated and the other side moves, so everyone meets everyone on the other side once. The number of rounds is the number of people on the larger side.

That gives you a simple sum:

rounds × round length + changeovers + a break = the dating part of the night

Twelve people on each side with five-minute rounds is twelve rounds. That's an hour of dates. Add a minute for each changeover and a break halfway, and you're at about an hour and a half. Arrival time goes before it and picks go after it.

Choose a size that keeps the last round as lively as the first. If your sum runs long, shorten the rounds or sell fewer places.

Keep the room balanced

An uneven room means someone sits out every round, and a night full of gaps sags.

Expect one side to sell faster. In a Northwestern University speed dating study, nearly all the women's places filled in under 48 hours, and the men's took a week. The same paper pictures a night with 10 women and 6 men, where the women spend much of the evening waiting for a free seat.

Ways to keep it close:

• Sell each side as its own ticket type, with its own cap, in your ticketing tool.
• Hold back a few places on the faster side until the slower side catches up.
• Keep a standby list of regulars and friends who can come at short notice.
• Decide before the night what happens with a gap. A rest table with a drink works, and so does a host who sits in.

Set an age range

Publish an age range for each night and put it near the top of the ticket page. A clear range saves an awkward conversation at the door.

• Ask buyers to confirm they're in the range when they book.
• Run the same range a few times before you change it, so regulars know which nights are theirs.
• If the venue serves alcohol, check ID at the door the way the venue requires.

Choose the venue

Visit at the hour you'll run, on the same night of the week, and sit at one of the tables. Then check:

• Can two people hear each other across a small table without leaning in?
• Is there a table for every pair, plus a rest table if the sides are uneven?
• Is there a spot where you can stand and be heard by everyone?
• Can the bar serve everyone at once during the break?
• Is there room by the door for a check-in queue?
• Do phones get a signal, or is there guest wifi? You'll want one if anything runs on phones.

A private room or a sectioned-off area is worth asking for on a busy night. Number the tables before anyone arrives. A folded card on each one is plenty.

Keep ticketing in your own tool

Sell tickets with whatever you already use. At booking, collect only what you need on the night: name, email, which side of the rotation, and the age confirmation.

Send a reminder the day before with the start time and the address. Ask people to arrive early, because the first round starts on time.

Build the guest list

The day before, pull your buyers out of your ticketing tool into one sheet. Give each row a name, an email, a side, and the number or letter that person will wear. Sort it by first name and print two copies for the door. Mark anyone who has told you they can't make it.

Pack the kit

• The printed guest list, two copies
• Name tags and a few thick markers
• Table numbers
• A timer you can hear over the room, plus a bell
• Scorecards and pens, if picks are on paper
• Spare scorecards, because someone always spills a drink on one
• A phone charger and an extension lead
• Your opening notes, on one card

The night itself

Arrival and check-in

Open the door about half an hour before the first round. At the door, find the name, tick it off, hand over a name tag and point the guest to the bar. If you can, put a friend on the door so you're free to greet people inside.

Decide in advance how late is too late to join the rotation, and tell whoever is on the door.

On Kemisu's Pro plan, each guest on your list gets a personal email invite with a sign-in link, plus a QR code for the door if you scan guests in. You scan the code with your own phone, or find the guest by name, and they're checked in. You paste or upload the list yourself, since it doesn't connect to your ticketing.

Name tags and numbers

First name, written large, plus a number or a letter. In the same Northwestern study, guests wrote their first name and an ID on their tag, with a number for women and a letter for men. It keeps a scorecard readable at midnight: a 7 and a G are hard to confuse.

If one side stays seated all night, their number can double as their table number. That saves a lot of "where do I go" at the start of round one.

Your opening

Keep it to a few minutes, from a spot where everyone can see you. Cover:

• How long each round runs, and the signal that ends one
• Who moves, and which way
• When the break is
• How picks work at the end
• A house rule or two, such as no swapping numbers during a round

People are nervous and holding a drink. Your job is to make the first round feel ordinary.

Round length and breaks

Rounds at speed dating events typically run 3 to 8 minutes, and they stay the same length all night. The bigger the room, the shorter each round needs to be, or the night runs long.

Allow a minute for each changeover, and plan one break around halfway. Ten to fifteen minutes is enough to refill a drink and reset. Watch the first two rounds closely. If conversations are fading a minute before the bell, your rounds are long.

A phone timer works. Make the end-of-round signal loud enough to cut through a busy room.

Rotation basics

The usual setup has one side sitting at numbered tables all night. The other side moves one table along after each round, always in the same direction, and whoever is at the last table moves to table 1. The Northwestern team set their tables in a loose circle, which makes "next table" easy to follow.

With five tables and the moving side lettered A to E, the night runs like this:

A few habits keep it smooth:

• With uneven sides, add a rest table to the loop. It moves like any other seat, so the sit-outs are shared around.
• Let people move first, then write notes at the next table. The Northwestern team did it this way because filling in a card about the person sitting across from you is awkward.
• For a night where everyone meets everyone, such as a same-gender night, use a round-robin schedule. Work it out and print it before the night.

Warm up the room

The first twenty minutes are the hard part. People arrive alone and hover near the bar, looking at their phones. Give them something to do before round one.

An icebreaker does that job. In Bingo, each guest gets a card of prompts, like "has lived abroad", and fills a square with the name of someone it fits. It sends people across the room with an opening line already in hand. A shared deck of questions works for a pair or a small table, and a few question cards on each table can rescue a round that stalls.

Kemisu runs both games in the phone's browser, with no app for guests to install. Bingo and Icebreaker Cards start free. You can try a Bingo card or Icebreaker Cards on your own phone first. At a Pro event, guests open them from their own event page.

Picks at the end

The usual format: each guest marks yes or no for everyone they met, and two people who both said yes get the chance to contact each other after the event. Settle these before the night:

• Mutual or one-way. Mutual means both people have to pick each other. One-way sends a guest's details to each person they pick.
• Whether there's a limit on how many people a guest can pick.
• When picks close. Ask while people are still seated after the last round, before they drift to the bar.

On paper, that means scorecards collected at the exit, then a long evening reading handwriting and typing up contact details.

On Pro, Kemisu's end-of-night picks run on guests' phones. Guests pick from the people at the event and can add a note to a pick. You choose mutual or one-way, with a pick limit if you want one. Results appear on each guest's event page when you close picks. In mutual mode, contact details go out only when two guests pick each other.

After the night

Send results

If picks were on paper, send results the next day, while the night is still fresh. Tally the yeses and find the pairs who picked each other. Then write to each guest about their own results.

Send one email per guest, and check the address twice. A results email with every guest in the To line is the kind of mistake people remember.

Write to everyone, including guests with no mutual picks. A short, kind note saves them refreshing their inbox all weekend.

Follow up

A few days later, send a thank-you with the date of your next night. Ask one or two questions while it's fresh, such as whether the rounds felt the right length and whether they could hear each other. Two questions get answered.

Your regulars are the base of every future night. Keep a list of who came back, and give them first look at tickets.

What to measure for next time

Keep a simple sheet, one row per night:

• Tickets sold on each side, and how fast each side sold
• No-shows on each side
• How many guests made one or more picks
• How many pairs picked each other
• How many guests came back from an earlier night
• What feedback said about round length and noise

After a few nights, the sheet shows you which formats sell and whether your rounds are the right length.

Where Kemisu fits

Kemisu doesn't time rounds or assign tables, and it sells no tickets. Keep your own floor format and your own ticketing. On Pro it handles your guest list, invitations, check-in, icebreakers, Bingo and end-of-night picks on guests' phones. Hosts pay for the plan, and guests never pay.

See how a speed dating night runs on Pro, or compare plans. Questions about what it does and doesn't do are in the FAQ.

Printable checklist