As told by Ian.

In the Summer of 2024, Ian had just moved from Beaverton into Portland and was curating his calendar of Portland events, which he hosted on www.ianrosado.com (he loved to tell people about it). One day before First Thursday, he saw a post on the Portland subreddit asking where people found their events. Feeling emboldened, he dropped his personal website in the comments and left for a night out.

He awoke the next day to an email. The post wasn’t from a person looking for events—it was Alli Goldberg, host of the Love Isn’t Blind comedy dating show, looking for places to promote the show. Without knowing that viewership of the calendar was rather limited in those days, she asked Ian to add the event to the calendar.

Fast forward two months, and Ian had matched with a cute girl named Tam on Hinge. She said she was too busy to plan a date for at least a week. He was using his calendar to plan his week when he saw the show coming up that Thursday.

Sitting in the crowd, the comedian announces the bachelorette for the night, and her name is Tam. That can’t be that common of a name…

Lo and behold, Tam comes out on stage and sweeps him away. Her stage presence, her wit, her smile—Ian decides he has to go to the after party to talk to her. But let’s rewind a few months…

In the Spring of 2024, Tam had decided that the dating apps were not going to cut it. She was not going to find the love of her life on Hinge. She went to speed dating events, dating cooking classes, approached strangers at bars (!!), and eventually found herself at a comedy dating show.

Now, these comedy dating shows are totally designed to be singles events for people in the crowd as well, but Tam knew that being on stage was the real way to have success. So what does she do? Obviously, she goes to the after party and buys shots for the comedians who run the show. The long game, ladies and gentlemen.

After a few months, they realized what we all already know: Tam needed to be on that stage. So they set her up to be on their show, Fun and Flirty. On that show, a comedian put together a slideshow about Tam and gave a presentation about why the audience should date her.

But more importantly, another comedian was planning to bring her comedy dating show, Love Isn’t Blind, to Portland and asked the Fun and Flirty crew if they knew any good bachelorettes. Luckily for us, they recommended Tam.

At this point, Tam was on the apps a little bit, and she had matched with a cutie named Ian. But she had just been on Fun and Flirty and was about to be on Love Isn’t Blind, so she had no time for Hinge dates.

The night of the show, she goes on stage, tells some hilarious stories, eliminates the bachelor contestants one by one, and then checks her phone after finding a Hinge notification from Ian. She’ll get to that tomorrow.

Now, the premise of the show was that Tam would go on a date with the last bachelor standing, but Alli told her that she should talk to as many people as possible. At the after party, Tam is having some wine and being the social butterfly she is, swatting away suitors left and right.

Ian gets there and does what any daring gentleman would do—he stands there and waits for her to finish her current conversation. He repeats the last thing he said to her on Hinge. She recognizes him. They exchange numbers. And the stage is set.

From there, it picks up pace quickly. Work-from-home lunch dates, park dates with breakfast burritos, fancy dinners, not-so-fancy dinners, and Santacon bar crawls. They take their first trip together over Christmas and New Year’s of that same year. They start to co-host parties the next year (Congee Party, Tam’s Bday Potato Party). Tam meets Ian in Costa Rica in the spring, where they confirm that they are each other’s favorite travel buddies. They live their Portland summer lives to the max, and Ian officially moves in that August (before marriage, I know).

During the best summer yet (coined by Tam), it’s plenty of biking, camping, swimming, and hanging by the river at the Duckworth Dock. Then more traveling, a job change, more parties (Congee Party again, Leaf Day!), a half marathon from Tam, and they both know, like they knew from the start, that this is the real deal.

So, on Thursday, February 26th, Ian makes up a really believable story about his friend telling him last minute that he is in town and wants to get dinner at a fancy restaurant. And Ian very coolly asks if Tam wants to watch the sunset at the dock beforehand.

They bike over, sit for 30 seconds, and then he can’t wait anymore. He gets on one knee and asks her to spend the rest of her life with him. She forgets to say yes. They get dinner and celebrate. (Guys, she had no idea it was coming, no matter what she tells you.)

And now we've reached the present and we want to celebrate our relationship and our wedding with you! It’s been more of the same since then—we bring out the best in each other, we help each other live the lives we’ve always wanted, and a big part of that is you: the family and friends that we love so much. So thank you, and we hope you can make it!