Tall, or taller? A doctor or a lawyer? In the new film Materialists, which stars Dakota Johnson as a stylish matchmaker who works with customers who seek the unattainable, these are the timeless issues that women face.
Although the idea of matchmaking may seem a little archaic, Materialists is helping some Boston-based matchmaking firms and introducing the profession to the general public.
What does a matchmaker actually do?
To arrange for scheduled dates, such as second or third dates, single people can pay matchmakers. Similar to a coach, a matchmaker helps clients identify what they want from a relationship and how to succeed in one. Boston-based matchmakers told Boston.com that some people find their life companions, while others just improve their dating skills.
Johnson plays Lucy, a highly successful matchmaker in Materialists. She has nine customer weddings to prove her intuition. The film portrays her as offering a high-end service, and she must deal with extremely high expectations. Both wealthy guys who wish to meet much younger, slender women and women who just want to meet wealthy, tall men.
Regarding the movie, Adam Cohen-Aslatei, CEO of the statewide matching website Three Day Rule, remarked that it felt like a very binary choice that a person had to make. Will I find someone I love or someone who is wealthy? Additionally, you’re finding the full package when you utilize a matchmaker.
How did Materialists compare to real matchmaking?
The film is set in New York and is allegedly based on director Celine Song’s personal experience working as a matchmaker. There has been an increase in interest in their services, according to some Boston matchmakers. They also claim that while the film did some things well, it did others horribly wrong.
Longtime Boston matchmaker Jill Vandor works with affluent clients for her company, Allure Matchmaking, and with a wider market through Lunch Dates. Regarding the cost of her services, Vandor remained silent.
Vandor admitted that she doesn’t keep track of the number of marriage-related interactions she has arranged, although she has occasionally attended and even conducted the wedding of a couple she introduced.
However, Vandor made reference to a celebration that Johnson’s character enjoys in the movie when he quipped, “I’m not gonna buy myself a cake.” Since anyone can date for the sole purpose of dating, it’s not simply about getting someone to go on a date. That isn’t the objective. The goal is to enter a relationship that is healthy.
When one of her customers is sexually attacked in the movie, Johnson’s character is forced to face her work. Boston.com was informed by several matchmakers that such an occurrence is extremely uncommon in their field. According to Cohen-Aslatei, women are at more risk from dating apps than from dates arranged by a matchmaker.
“I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and not only has that never happened to me, but I’ve never heard of anything like that ever happening in a network of 400 matchmakers,” Vandor added.
Matchmakers see renewed interest
After graduating from Harvard Business School, Cohen-Aslatei first entered the dating app industry. However, Three Day Rule is a matchmaking service with a personal matchmaker and dating coaches, not a dating app.
Using a matchmaking service is not inexpensive, just as in the movie. Packages from Three Day Rule start at $5,900, and one package costs $1 million and comes with benefits including a private three-person matchmaking team, concierge-level date preparation, and a three-carat diamond engagement ring. Additionally, single people can sign up for the company’s free database to be considered as possible dates for its customers.
Cohen-Aslatei hypothesized that materialists could be the reason for a record rise in clients and database additions in May and June.
According to him, this film did help matchmaking gain popularity.
Vandor acknowledged that Materialists could spark interest in the field, but she said that her clientele prefer the solitude and secrecy of it all.
According to Cohen-Aslatei, Three Day Rule has about a thousand customers, making it one of the biggest matchmaking businesses in the nation. According to the CEO, roughly 12% of them are headquartered in Boston, one of their cities with a younger customer.
They don’t want the procedure to be delayed. According to Cohen-Aslatei, people are willing to spend money and employ a matchmaking service in order to locate the perfect individual if they don’t already have someone in their network.
Is matchmaking the future of dating?
In particular, Wade Kyle of The Magical Matchmaker works with the Northeast’s LGBTQIA+ population. The initial cost of his four-month service contract is $6,000.
According to him, materialists seem to be more interested in the vast, corporate realm of straight matchmaking. He claimed that Johnson’s character’s service was very one-dimensional and that she behaved impolitely when she checked in to see how initial dates went. No coaching took place.
That was a little bit of my experience when I worked with straight people; they were always fixated on factors like height, body type, income, and appearance, especially when it came to men, Kyle said. Whenever the folks said those things, she didn’t really respond by pushing back.
According to Kyle, LGBTQ people can use matchmaking to achieve other goals even while they aren’t particularly focused on the dates of marriage or having children, which are associated with certain social conventions.
They are still interested in establishing a long-term partnership. All they want to do is try something new. According to Kyle, “I find that queer people meet a lot of people, and a lot of those relationships are short term.” They’re searching for a deep relationship. It simply has a slightly different definition.
Matchmakers stated that they regard their service as the future, despite the dominance of dating applications at the moment.
According to Vandor, people of all ages are tired with swiping and appreciate that we are a fully offline matchmaking service that handles all the work for our customers. In fact, the matchmaking industry is a quite large one these days, and it continues to grow.
Molly Farrar works for Boston.com as a general assignment reporter, covering topics such as politics, crime, and education.
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