On a random Thursday in October last year and on a huge downer from discovering the flat Mitch and I wanted to buy had BURNT DOWN (fortunately no one was hurt and we hadn't signed anything) I received the following email from Beaverbrooks the Jewellers....
All I saw were the words LA, Grammy's and flights and completely freaked out. I sent a screenshot of the email to Mitch with the word "AHHHHHHHHHHH!" and then phoned the number at the bottom of the email. Aimee explained that I had entered the competition on Twitter and had won two FIRST CLASS flights to LA in February of this year, three nights in a 5 star hotel, VIP tickets to the Grammy's to walk down the RED CARPET and then seats in a private box. I was so overwhelmed I burst in to tears in the corridor at work. Happy tears obviously! I got off the phone to a load of messages from Mitch along the lines of "OMG", "What the..." "When is it!?" "Wait, it is for two people, right!?"
We counted down the four months from October to February, planning our outfits and checking the Grammy's website to find out who would be performing. I bagged myself a bargain in my dress, a Forever Unique beaded number half price in the ASOS January sale and watched a dozen red carpet make up look YouTube tutorials! Then on Friday 6th February we met the people from Gucci who were accompanying us on the trip in the first class lounge at Heathrow. We enjoyed a few pre-flight G&T's in the company of Robbie Williams. We chickened out of talking to him but took a sneaky photo with him in the background!
Then it was time to board our Air New Zealand flight to LA and we were in absolute luxury. We were handed a glass of champagne as we sat into what I can only describe as pods! The staff were really excited for us as they could tell this was not our usual mode of transport! Mitch had never even been on a long haul flight before and i'd only ever flown economy. This was something else!
I was excited by everything, the table cloth and real cutlery and crockery at dinner time, the fact we could order chocolate and champagne from our TV screens completely free, and the fact I was lying down, in a bed, on a plane!
We arrived at our hotel, Mr C in Beverly Hills to find this lovely surprise waiting for us.
The next day we went in to Beverly Hills and were treated to a private performance by the awesome Aloe Blacc (of "I Need a Dollar" fame) He was so lovely and even came to say hi afterwards.
The next day was Grammy's day! I woke up early to get my make up and hair just right but obviously my usual fail safe curly hair style wouldn't go right and I smudged my winged eyeliner! And then an hour before the car was due to pick us up Mitch realised he'd forgotten his cufflinks! We were staying in such a posh hotel they got their "house car" to drive him to the shops to fetch some but we were staying in such a posh hotel their usual clientèle would be happy to shop somewhere where a pair of cufflinks would set you back $400! Needless to say Mitch didn't plump for those ones and found an alternative shop, and got back with 20 minutes to spare! We scurried down to the lobby with just enough time to get a few snaps and boarded the luxury minibus to take us to the Staples Centre.
When we arrived it was chaos, and we realised that the red carpet was split in to two, one side was for the celebs and the other side was for the guests, the "normal" folk like us! The security guards did their best to usher everyone along but we couldn't help but stop every few metres to have a glance over at who we could spot, the first celeb spot was Ed Sheeran who is one of our favourite artists so we were completely star struck! We got to stop and have a nice professional photo which we will treasure forever and will always be a talking point.
After the madness of the red carpet and being with in touching distance of Pharell Williams, Gwen Stefani and Annie Lennox to name but a few we stepped in to our private box and were greeted by a personal bar man who poured us a drink and pointed us towards the huge spread of food that was laid out! It was insane, how the other half live! The performances were out of this world, we saw Sam Smith, Ed Sheeran, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Katy Perry, John Legend and ACDC and many more! This photo came from the Beaverbrooks website as I was too excited to get a good one, but this shows the scale of the arena and the vast number of people that were there!
It was a money can't buy experience and we were so grateful to Beaverbrooks and Gucci for offering this amazing prize, and to whoever randomly selected me out of the thousands of entrants, we are eternally grateful!
We were lucky enough to be able to extend our trip by a few days and after checking out of our hotel we picked up this car from the car hire (it had to be done!) and headed down to Anaheim via Santa Monica and Venice Beach.
I have always wanted to go to Disneyland and have never even been to the Paris one before so to be so close to the original Disneyland we just had to go! Mitch was a bit sceptical about it but the moment we arrived we both had huge grins on our faces and had the best day ever! (The matching outfits were totally non intentional!)
We picked up a lovely leather bound notebook in one of the many shops along with some over over priced but totally necessary souvenirs (the mickey mouse shaped salt and pepper pots are my personal favourite!) and used the notebook to create a lovely scrapbook with all of our photos and tickets in.
We also visited San Diego Zoo before we left as we had never seen pandas before so it had to be done, it was a scorching 40 degrees that day and a little too hot but it was another zoo to tick off the list (we are up to 9 now I think!)
We flew back in equal luxury to the flight out there and arrived home having created many memories that will stay with us forever :)
So the next time you see a competition being advertised just remember, someone's got to win it, and why not you! I will write a post about how to better your chances of winning competitions and my comping tips, I actually enter around 500 competitions a month, and obviously this time it paid off!
Abbie x
