Get ready for your evenings to heat up as First Dates returns to our screens!
Season 11 of the beloved dating series continued tonight with eight hopeful romantics taking their seats at the Gibson Hotel, looking for love, romance, connection and at the very least a nice meal.
Sorcha, 30, from Drimnagh, arrived with high hopes after six years of living the single life and now firmly looking for 'the Forever One'.
"I do want the fairytale, I want the story", she told producers.
Enter, quick-witted, flirty Jennifer (27) from Longford, who arrived dead set on meeting her own princess to live with in her future-bungalow. She strolled into the restaurant with crocheted flowers in hand - made by her mammy - to seal the deal.
A self-confessed 'lover girl', Jennifer was eager to find love after two years of being single, having been in relationships from 16 to 25. "The next relationship I go into, I want that to be the one."
The pair spoke about living at home and saving for their homes, with Jennifer talking lovingly about her niece, who has Down Syndrome and has overcome enormous health struggles in recent months. It was a natural meeting point for talking about wanting families of their own, which rapidly progressed to jokes about living together and settling down.
As Jennifer later quipped, "That's lesbians for ya".
Sorcha spoke about life with a disability, explaining that "I never lost my ability to walk, I never had it, so I never knew any different".
"I was always brought up to the point of, you can do it, but try, try." She added that she finds "pride in it," and in being different.
"My disability is probably the least exciting thing about me", she said. "But if I say it on Tinder, if I say it online, not a lot of questions I get would be about me, rather than 'can you do this?' or 'can you do that?' Dating is hard."
That said, Sorcha and Jennifer made light work of reeling through both lighthearted and deep conversations, talking about past relationships, expectations, and even joking about buying a bigger car that is wheelchair-accessible.
So it was no surprise, then, that the pair was an instant match, joking about booking a U-Haul to move their stuff in together and going on to date long after their first encounter in the First Dates restaurant.
Once again, in the sage words of Jennifer, "That's lesbians for ya."
Watch First Dates Ireland returns on Thursdays at 9.35pm on RTÉ2.
