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Save
the Date(ing)

The writer met Hattie Elliot, the founder
of Save the Date(ing), on a stinging cold
January morning at Snice, a little coffee shop
on 8th Avenue and West 4th Street, a couple of
blocks from the E train’s 14th street stop. This
is the part of the city where things get wonky:
14th Street, 13th Street, gas station, traffic
island, West 4th Street. The writer’s late and
flustered but Elliot’s completely jazzed about
Save the Date(ing), which she founded as a fun
and nonstressful way for singles to meet. On the
other hand, the nonstressful part is
conditional. The stress, for the busy folks that
sign up for the program, is the pleasurable
kind.
Elliot started the business in November
2008 as a hobby, to enable her friends to meet
each other. She believes the best way to meet
someone is “the way our parents did, through a
friend or the church,” so she got fifteen of her
girlfriends and fifteen of her guy friends
together. Though she does see the value of
networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and
match.com, she believes it’s still valuable to
meet face to face. Now Save the Date(ing) has
200 members and Elliot recruits 15-20 new
members a month. At least a couple of them have
gotten engaged through Save the Date(ing).
“We’re on a mission to revive the idea of old
fashioned courtship,” Elliot says.
She just opened a new chapter in San
Francisco, to join the ones in New York and Los
Angeles. “So if you are in one club you can
network with another,” she explains. She hopes
to open chapters in San Diego and Chicago soon.
The dues are $250 per quarter.
Activities at the monthly meetings include
sushi making, flying trapeze lessons (which was
fun but left people a bit bruised), classic
cocktail making taught by a mixologist, cigar
rolling and whisky tasting. Elliot’s rented a
ski house in Killington, Vermont for the first
week of March, and the twenty lucky guests will
have the services of a chef. Then Elliot
mentioned another activity that took the writer
by surprise.
“Did you say hooker night?” I asked.
“No poker night,” Elliot corrected.
The members don’t have that kind of
fun.
There will also be snowmobiling, tequila
and food preparing, a bocce ball tournament in
L.A. and splatter painting a la Jackson Pollack.
Elliot usually participates but she draws the
line at skydiving. “I value my life much too
much,” she says, though her partner might
partake, having skydived before. She has a two
full time Save the Date(ing) workers in New
York, one in Los Angeles, and will have one
worker each in San Francisco, San Diego and
Chicago. Not surprisingly, she flies about three
times a month and has a seventeen hour work day,
but she loves it.
The ambitious, smart and meticulous Elliot,
who spent at least some of her recent vacation
in Guatemala sussing out places to hold events,
describes herself as a woman who’s used to going
on “twenty-first dates.” She vets every person
who applies for Save the Date(ing). Not
surprisingly the clients are largely go getters
like herself. One, who’s involved in the charity
Doctors Without Borders, made a film about them
and is having a private screening. Another
member is involved with Harboring Hearts, which
extends hospitality to patients who come to New
York for heart surgery. “If members have
charities or projects, we'll help promote it
through the network,” says Elliot.
Like Elliot, who has an apartment not far
from her coffee shop, most of the clientele are
from downtown, and Save the Date(ing) has its
base in the Village. “It’s a very downtown
organization,” she says.
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