Love at first swipe and now Tinder baby makes three

When two young Kiwis swiped to the right on Tinder three years ago, they never guessed their match would end so traditionally - with a house, a dog and a newborn baby.

Shanna Breman-Trewern met Tim Hills in 2013 after matching on the dating app, and from the get-go the pair realised it was something special.

"I would have just brushed it off if you'd told me I was going to meet someone online and have a baby, a dog and a house and be really content and happy," Breman-Trewern told the Herald on Sunday.

"It's the complete opposite of what I thought my life would be like now." The Kingsland couple became parents to baby Hazel in April.

"Our friends all find it pretty funny - they call Hazel the Tinder baby," Breman-Trewern said.

"We're pretty open about it. My mum still can't really understand what Tinder is - she tells people it was online dating, which I hate. [Tinder's] not so desperate as online dating, I think."

Breman-Trewern said in some ways she got lucky matching with Hills, who she met in September 2013, shortly after she began using the app. Tinder launched in the US in September 2012 and was here by early 2013.

"We both must have joined Tinder at the same time because we were each other's first match," she said.

"Everyone is quite impressed that it worked. Everyone has horrid stories of using Tinder - boring date after cheap date after weirdo date.

"It's weird because I didn't go on Tinder for very long before I met Tim.

"It was so quick. I kind of went straight into this quite full-on serious relationship." After chatting through the app for a week or so, the pair met at a bar in Wellington, where they were both living.

"We both had really funny impressions of what each other was wearing.

"He was, in my mind, wearing something that a farmer would wear on a fancy day - like a fancy jersey. I just thought, 'Oh my goodness, what is he wearing?'

"I was wearing like a little fur coat and red lipstick and he thought, 'Oh my gosh, what's she wearing'!" Even so, the pair hit it off and not long after they met each other's families and decided to move in together.

Both Breman-Trewern and Hills think relationships like theirs will become more common.

"I think it's really cool, I think it's a sign of today, a sign of the technology age and social media," said Hills.

"Even though it's someone that you met online, at the same time because of the way that Tinder works you've got mutual friends so it's like meeting someone through a friend of a friend but the internet has enabled that to happen."

Hills, also 26, said he and Breman-Trewern joked that after being each other's first matches, they'd just been "too lazy to continue" trying to meet other people.

He said anyone looking for love should "definitely" give Tinder a go.

"You never know what will happen and it's the straightforward way to find love in the modern day world." Tell us your Tinder story: news@heraldonsunday.co.nz