After years of at all times being the perpetual bridesmaid, Lisa Catalano of San Mateo laid down her soft-pink bouquet, hung up her strappy blue satin Maid of Honor costume and drafted a textual content to her mates:
“I’m officially announcing my retirement from being a bridesmaid,” she wrote. “The next wedding I’m going to be in will be with my own groom, TBD.”
Two years earlier, her fiancé had died of a terminal sickness. After failed makes an attempt at courting apps, set-ups and matchmaking databases, Catalano, now 42, reworked her quest with gusto.
Creating a private courting marketing campaign, she rented area on a dozen digital billboards alongside Freeway 101 between Santa Clara and South San Francisco, adorning every along with her smiling face, cascading brunette curls and a easy message: “MarryLisa.com.” She’s operating the identical pictures on the tops of taxis in San Francisco as properly.
With the enhance from a neighborhood TV station and the New York Put up, which shared her story final week, the site visitors to her “Marry Lisa” web site has soared. By Tuesday morning, almost 2,000 males — some from so far as India and the Center East — had utilized to be Mr. Proper.
“I keep joking with my friends and family, because this has felt to me like the beginning of a romcom, except so far, it’s been all com and no rom,” she stated. “I hope that that changes soon.”
Catalano’s story is equal elements “Bridget Jones Diary” and “The Bachelorette,” however her journey additionally reveals but once more the struggles to seek out love within the post-Covid age of distant work, isolating social media and the frenetic tempo of Silicon Valley.
Bay Space courting coach Marie Thouin sympathizes with Catalano’s struggles to seek out the one, as girls, particularly, seek for conventional relationships in a area that usually questions conventions, and the place eligible males who desire a spouse and kids are sometimes placing it off till after their careers are established.
Catalano, she stated, is “fearless.”
“She’s breaking a lot of the shame that a lot of women have about wanting partnership. A lot of people don’t want to seem too desperate and so they’re downplaying their desire for a relationship. And she is boldly doing the opposite,” Thouin stated. “She’s saying, ‘Hey, this is so important to me that I’m willing to put myself out there on a billboard. I’m willing to create a website for this. I’m willing to go the distance to show the world I want this.”
Catalano’s studio residence, adorned with a patchwork quilt, a sheepskin rug and light-weight blue love seat, has develop into her makeshift command middle. On Tuesday morning, her telephone stored pinging with each new courting utility submitted to her web site. Individuals Journal interviewed her Tuesday morning and she or he’s heading to a TV interview in Oakland Thursday. She’s fielded calls from producers for “Jimmy Kimmel Live! “and CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360.”
She’s had a lot curiosity from so many who she’s barely had an opportunity to review the purposes or go on a single date.
“I’m reviewing the applications myself. I’m not using AI or any tools like that,” she stated. “I’m doing it the old fashioned way, but this is not an old fashioned approach at all.”
Catalano is remarkably revealing on her MarryLisa.com web site. Top, weight, bra measurement? All spelled out in black and white. Does she kiss on a primary date? Intercourse and intimacy? Her flaws and imperfections? She talks about all that in a string of movies.
A Santa Clara College alumna who labored in tech and the cosmetics business and is now freelancing, she enjoys wine “and the occasional cocktail.” She’s a Giants fan, owns a convertible and loves cats. “Has never had any cosmetic procedures,” she wrote, is “high energy, healthy active.”
Her potential suitor should be faculty educated, drug free, aligned along with her left-leaning politics and be prepared for marriage and kids inside three years.
Catalano is shopping for a brand new printer so she will be able to kind the possible suitors into piles and certain enlist some mates to assist.
Longtime pal Jamie Bainum says she met her boyfriend on Tinder two years in the past and hoped the courting apps would work for Catalano. The billboard marketing campaign as a substitute, she stated, is “so smart.”
“She’s very outgoing to do it, because it’s definitely serious putting yourself out there for the whole world to see,” stated Bainum, 42, of Florida. “But she’s a very good person. She doesn’t have anything to hide, so you’re not going to find any bad things about her. She’s very honest. She’s very fun. She’s just a really good person who deserves a really good guy.”
Together with those that could be the good ones, nonetheless, Catalano has obtained quite a few unhealthy ones.
“I’m getting phony applications that are just saying the most horrific things about me,” she stated. “I’m putting myself out there and my love life out there. It’s a very vulnerable thing and so I expected some criticism, but this? I’m just trying to roll with it.”
She has elevated her private safety, she stated, and plans to conduct her “due diligence” earlier than she agrees to a date. However for each adverse applicant, there are extra optimistic ones encouraging her search.
Catalano declined to say how a lot her marketing campaign is costing her to this point. (She’ll calculate that later, she stated, ) And for all her openness, she didn’t wish to speak an excessive amount of about her late fiancé out of respect, besides to say that their relationship was “easy-going” and so they had “great communication.”
“I think he would be cheering me on and laughing at this whole thing,” she stated. “He would want me to be happy.”
Whether or not her future husband is someplace in her rising database stays to be seen. However for these desirous about her progress, she’s planning on documenting her journey on her “marrylisaofficial” web page on TikTok.
“I do plan on shooting a little content for social media like getting ready for the date, what I’m wearing, that sort of thing, and giving a quick little brief recap of the dates,” she stated.
However she’ll maintain the lads’s names and faces non-public.
“As unconventional as all of this is, I want to try as hard as possible to make the actual dates themselves feel normal,” she stated.
When the publicity dies down, she stated, she’s anxious to delve into the purposes.
In spite of everything, she stated, “I’m not doing this for fame. I’m doing this for love.”
