I have an interesting story for those of us in shidduchim… My friend studied in MTJ (Rabbi Feinstein’s yeshiva).
Once, my friend attended a wedding with R’ Dovid Feinstein and he noticed that there were two lines of people waiting to get brachas from the Rav. One was of boys and the other was of girls, and both were asking for brachas in shidduchim. R’ Feinstein turned to him and said something along the lines of, ‘I don’t understand why they are all coming to me for a bracha. There is a line of boys and a line of girls… Why don’t they just socialize and get to know each other?’
His point seemed to be that today, people are so concerned with the frum velt’s formalities in shidduchim that they fail to realize that it’s perfectly permissible to circumvent the superficial establishment and do it in a more “natural” way. I am put off by people who think that it’s somehow a lack of tzniyus for a boy to approach a girl he is interested in getting to know to ask her out on a date. If it’s good enough for R’ Feinstein, it’s good enough for me. I’m not saying shadchanim aren’t worthwhile. It’s nice to not have to reject someone to their face, but if you need to get married you don’t necessarily have to go through all the bureaucratic channels.