Meet & Greet with Rita Ora - 29th January 2013 - Newcastle

Hi guys.

Ok, so I know this isn't a new nails post, but I just have to do a quick post on this because it was one of if not the best moment and experience of my life to date!

On Tuesday I had tickets to go and see Rita Ora in concert at my local O2 Academy in Newcastle. I had seen that her management team were running competitions giving the option to win meet and greets for selected venues if you uploaded a picture to Intsagram and tagged it #RadioactiveTour. I was at school at the time, so I didn't have my tickets with me to take a picture of myself with them, so I immediately thought I didn't have much of a chance at all. However, I knew I had nothing to loose so I chose to upload a picture of both my ticket with a signed copy of Rita's debut album, ORA, that I own.

It felt like such a long wait before the winners were picked, and I honestly wasn't expecting to win at all. Then, to my surprise, I got the notification through to my phone to say that her management had commented on my photo! I just saw 'WINNER!' and I almost died on the spot. I couldn't even believe it. I was in my English lesson and I couldn't even focus to do any work for the rest of the afternoon because I was just far too excited.

My winning photo!

We were told to arrive at the venue by 6pm and someone from Rita's team would could outside to pick us up and take us inside. They were running late though so it was after 6:20pm when we actually got to go inside. This had its consequences later as it meant we didn't get to stand in the front row at the barrier as they had to let the other people who were queuing outside in whilst we were in the meet and greet. It was raining and really windy so we were all panicking about looking an absolute mess next to Rita when we got photos taken with her! But anyway, when we were took inside, there was a guy on the door who checked our names on a list and then we were lead backstage to the dressing rooms! At this point I was almost hyperventilating haha. We all lined up on the stairs and waited whilst Rita was doing  some press interviews. It seemed like we waited so long here, but it wasn't too bad because at least we were out of the rain and had at least half an hour to dry off.

It finally got to 7pm and the guy came out and said that she was ready to see us! It was two people at a time. My sister and I were the third group in the queue, so we got in petty quickly after this. We walked into the room and there she was. Right in front of me. I couldn't quite believe my eyes as it didn't feel real! She is even more perfect and flawless in real life. I tried my best to keep myself composed for the few minutes that we had with her because I thought to myself no way am I spoiling this moment, I can fangirl after haha.

This is a summary of what happened when we went in:
Rita said "Hello! Nice to meet you." and gave me a big hug. Then she was like "Wow, you're so pretty!" (as you can imagine, at this point I thought I was going to wake up from a dream or something lol) "Come in close for a photo." She put her arms around me and my sister and her professional photographer took a photo of us together. Then she said "Do you want me to sign anything for you?" So I said "Yes please, my ticket if you don't mind". I was practically shaking at this point! She signed both our tickets and whilst she was doing this I obviously noticed her nails, as I had seen the design around on Twitter the day before. "I love your nails!" I exclaimed. She replied "Oh thank you. I'm still in the middle of getting one of them done! That's why I was a bit late" and she showed me her blank thumb (hahaha). Then she said "Woah, let's see yours.. Wow! They are amazing! Is it your 18th today?"(I'm still rocking the birthday nails from last week! lol) I told her no it wasn't today and how it was on Friday, and then she was like "Aw, happy 18th for friday then! Hope you had a lovely day". I was aware we'd already had a lot of time with her and the next pair would be waiting for their turn so we wrapped up our conversation. Then just before we left, she said "Thank you so much for coming, I hope you enjoy the show" so I finished with "We definitely will! Thank you so much."

This is the front of the venue, the sign for the dressing rooms backstage,
my signed concert ticket and then the photo of myself and Rita!

The concert itself afterwards was amazing. She is an amazing live performer. And the whole night was made even better by getting this once in a lifetime opportunity to meet her. It's been 2 days now and I still can't actually believe it happened! I set the picture as my phone screensaver so every time I unlock my phone everything comes flooding back, but it's so so so unreal.

And that was the day I got to meet one of my idols! Sorry if I've bored you with this post, I'll be back to my normal nail stuff next time. I just couldn't not tell you guys about it. Thanks for reading if you did! :)

Until next time,