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CMT Awards Pink Carpet, Grand Ole Opry & City of Hope Softball Game

#cmafest

#cmtawards

#grandoleopry

This year for CMA Fest I wanted to go all in and really enjoy everything that the city of Nashville had to offer leading up to the Festival Kick off.  I decided to fly in on Tuesday and get things started.  For the pre-festival nights we found a hotel outside the city as most of the downtown hotels were extremely high in price.

Stayed at the http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/bnagi-the-inn-at-opryland-a-gaylord-hotel/ .  Pros were that they did have a bus that would take you to/from downtown for a fee and they had a shuttle over to the Grand Ole Opry for the shows which was nice.   Con’s our room smelled absolutely awful, it was an ok hotel not sure I would ever stay there again truthfully.

First stop was the City of Hope Softball game.  This is a really fun event every year but, it is sweltering at the ball park so you want to drink a lot and stay hydrated.  You really get to see the fun personalities and competitive spirit of the celebrities and all for a great cause.  City of Hope does a lot of tremendous work. They raised over $200,000 for cancer research and there was a wide range of celebrities that showed up to play including:  Bret Michaels, Vince Gill, Barry Zito, Lauren Alaina, Craig Wayne Boyd, Danielle Bradbery, Bobby Bones, Bucky Covington, Jessie James Decker, Charles Esten, Nick Fradiani, Mickey Guyton, Jonathan Jackson, Chris Lane, LOCASH, Scotty McCreery, A Thousand Horses, Tristan McIntosh, David Nail, Cassadee Pope, RaeLynn, Jamie Lynn Spears, Mark Wills and Brett Young. Trisha Yearwood sang the national anthem.  The event Emcee’s were Bill Cody and Lorianne Crooks.  Here is a video of Trisha Yearwood singing the national anthem:

After the game we headed over to one of my favorite restaurants in Nashville: http://www.demosrestaurants.com/food  the food is amazing, I go every year once or twice just for the Brown Butter Garlic Spaghetti, it’s to die for!  The staff is very friendly, they do a great job of getting people seated, drinks are great and food is like I said AMAZING!

To wrap up the evening we went to the http://www.opry.com/ for the late show.  I had never been in my past travels to Nashville and I will say I really enjoyed it!  We didn’t get the tickets until a few weeks before so we were pretty high up but, the acoustics were incredible.  The late show had Darius Rucker, Chris Janson, Charles Esten (50^th performance at the Opry), Lindsay Eli, Bill Anderson, Jeannie Seeley (50^th Anniversary) and Carrie Underwood.  Each performer was absolutely amazing.  I will absolutely go back on a future trip to Nashville and do the tour etc.

 Wednesday was a day I was really looking forward to.  My friends and I were selected for the Pink Carpet arrivals for the CMT Awards.  That might just be one of the most fun events I have ever participated in.  I will say there was a lot of standing around waiting for hours until it was time to get into position.  The one drawback was after they had us all set then they let the general public over and they were not following the rules, guidelines which was disappointing.  If you ever do it don’t try to take photos of you and multiple friends.  At first I thought that would make it easier for the celebrities to take one pic and get us all in but, it wasn’t effective.  Truthfully in many ways it would have been better to be across the street where the general public was standing because most of the celebrities ran over there after getting out of their cars.  However it was too much fun standing there and seeing who was stepping out of the limos as they pulled up right in front of us.  Luke Bryan, Thomas Rhett, Cole Swindell etc. all got out right in front of us.  It was so nice to see Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman arrive and they might just be the sweetest couple ever.  We were able to get selfie’s with Sam Hunt, Frankie Ballard, Maren Morris, Billy Ray Cyrus & Easton Corbin.

The one thing you will hear me saying through the CMA posts is there is a very clear line between the musicians/celebrities that never forgot that it was the fans that helped to get them to where they are today and the ones that somehow forgot that and acted like they were above fan interaction.  I will say that overall Country artists are some of the best when it comes to that and a good 90% were awesome about it all weekend.  I will provide examples in the next few blogs on the actual festival with examples of what I am describing on that point.

After we were released we headed into the CMT Awards.  This was another fun event that we planned a bit last minute and it was really exciting to be in the room and watch the awards show live, all the interactions the stars had with each other on commercial breaks etc.  I really had a great time.

Over the next few days I will post blogs on the actual 4 day CMA Fest!   Stay tuned for more!

For all the photos of the Red Carpet arrivals you can view it at: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1010333205710059.1073741833.935628749847172&type=1&l=83e2964bf0

What was I wearing on the Pink Carpet? http://www.bebe.com/

Until next time,

Xoxoxo

Heather