The Bachelor: The Women Tell All. To give you a little insight on us, we LOVE some good reality TV. At the top of our lists are Dancing with the Stars (which we just went to their tour last week in Boise. YAY!), The Amazing Race, Survivor, and our two favorites The Bachelor/Bachelorette and Big Brother! So the fact that we got tickets to see The Bachelor be filmed is mind blowing. How did we get tickets you wonder? Well so did we… So here is the story of our fun spontaneous trip to California.

On Sunday afternoon, I (Brandi) went over to the computer and randomly checked my email. Which, first off, my friend was here so I was busy visiting with her, and second, I don’t get any time sensitive important emails to my personal email so there is no need to check it on a Sunday afternoon. But nevertheless I did just that. I was shocked to see an email from Bachelor Audience. Curious, I opened the email that said “Hi Brandi, You’re on our list from our previous tapings, we have seats available for our special– WOMEN TELL ALL this TUESDAY on 2/13. Let me know if you and a guest (or two) would like to be placed on the list! Thanks!” It had been sent 50 minutes prior to me opening it. So in a panic I responded right away saying that I would love tickets if they were still available. The next hour (until they responded) was torture for me haha. I refreshed my email more then I want to admit. I didn’t want to get excited about the possibility of going to The Women Tell All if it wasn’t going to happen, and honestly what are the odds that she hadn’t already given them away within that hour before I responded. Well I went to refresh my email once again and finally saw they had responded! It said that she just needed the names of me and my guests and she would put us on the list. I excitedly told Casey, but was afraid it might not work out since we had to be there within 43 hours from this point. But being the wonderful man he is and knowing my love for the show, he said that we had to make it work and figure out plans for the kids, because we couldn’t miss it! I WAS SO EXCITED!! I ended up getting 3 extra tickets so I decided to take Casey (duh), my mom who introduced me to The Bachelor and has watched all 35 seasons, and my good friend Clarissa who was visiting me from Logan for the weekend. We do a bachelor fantasy draft together each season and it’s so much fun! ( https://bachfantasy.com if you wanna check it out! They now count the points weekly on a facebook group called bachelor fantasy crowd source points) I was so excited to call my mom and invite her to go. I remember asking her what she was doing that week, and told her to cancel her plans to go to The Women Tell All. She was super caught off guard but of course agreed to come and was thrilled!

I should mention that it was my son’s 1st birthday on the upcoming Thursday, and the taping was on Tuesday. So that was a dilemma too. We wanted to make sure to be back for it but we also didn’t want to miss this once in a lifetime opportunity. The next 24 hours were insane. We decorated for our sons birthday, Casey cancelled or found substitutes for all his clients, packed, bought plane tickets, found a place to stay (15 minutes before leaving town), called family and scheduled people to watch our children, organized everything the kids would need the next couple of days, spoke with a doctor and got medicine for our daughter who of course ended up getting sick on Sunday night (worst timing ever, but luckily it was quick and she was feeling better before we left town), went to the store, and googled to make sure that the email was not a scam haha. Woah it was a crazy 24 hours! Thank goodness I had my friend Clarissa here who is so helpful. She did most the decorating for our son’s birthday and watched my kids while I ran some errands. She really earned that ticket 😉

Also, I’m still not sure why they emailed me to offer me tickets. I had written them twice before; once in 2015, and another time this past fall for more information about being in the audience on one of their dates. So maybe they just went back in their email history and picked someone who had inquired about being on a date? Honestly not sure but so happy they did choose lucky me! If you want to watch for upcoming bachelor events follow @TheBachelorTv on twitter. That is where they post stuff about dates you can attend.

So on Monday afternoon we left town and headed to Salt Lake to catch our flight. We were all so excited and talked about all the people we were excited to see! Chris Harrison of course was at the top of the list! We all agreed that Arie was not one of our favorite bachelors but it was still going to be awesome to be there and see him too (although my mom really wished it was Nick Viall’s season).  Casey was a big fan of Tia and Clarissa loved Kendall. Both of which were in the top 4, and only the top 3 were not at The Women Tell All. So they were both hoping one of their girls were sent home next so they would be at the taping. Our flight was good, and after waiting to be let into our airbnb for over 30 minutes we were finally settled in our place on Hollywood Boulevard. It was so loud outside our apartment all hours of the night, but it just added to the fun of being in California right on Hollywood Boulevard.

Now I am not a very spontaneous person, so we all kept talking about how crazy it was that we were in the California heat in general, especially about to go watch the taping of our favorite show. It all happened so fast but I wouldn’t change anything about it.

The next morning was the big day. We all kept saying we wouldn’t believe it until we were in that Women Tell All room. We went through security and they made sure we all left our cell phones at home or we had to check them in with them. Then we all sat in a room in front of 2 tvs. They had us all fill out paperwork saying that we wouldn’t spoil the episode and tell people before it airs, and if we did, there was a 5 million dollar fine. Yup you read that right… $5 Million! They take that secrecy very seriously, and don’t want people ruining it for others (cough cough, Reality Steve). They fed us lunch and we watched the last part of the next weeks episode. This was important for us to see so we knew who was going to be at The Women Tell All. Once it was over they lined us up to go to another studio where the taping would be. We had one last time to go to the bathroom before we went in for filming. We stood in front of this huge banner wall that said The Bachelor all over it, and we just kept talking about how we wished we would have our cell phones to take pictures. I took so many mental pictures that day.

The minute we walked through the curtains into the room for taping was completely surreal. It looked just like it does on TV and I couldn’t believe I was actually there. One thing I found to be funny was that all the t-shirts and posters you see on the show were all provided. If you got sat in a seat with a shirt you were suppose to wear it. I was bummed I didn’t get a seat with props but other then that we got the BEST seats. Seriously it was such a great view. If you have ever watched, you know the big tv screen they all look at to watch bloopers or other video reels. We were on the side of that and the “hot seat” was facing us. We could see the side of Chris Harrison and all of the girls. So we could pretty much see everyone’s facial expressions the whole time. The people located directly behind Chris Harrison or the girls got more screen time because they are behind them while filming, but we didn’t care about being on TV, we were there for the experience and to watch it live and for that we had the best view. So we were pretty thrilled! We got there at 11am and once we got into the room for the taping it was about 2:45pm.  Once we got seated we started recording our reactions. It seems funny that they record our reactions before the show starts recording, but it made complete sense later. We tapped from 2:45pm to 8:15pm. I have never been so sore from clapping in my life. It hurt. It was completely worth it though. I was so happy to be there. So they had us clap, jump up to stand while clapping, look shocked, whisper to our neighbor, etc. They want big reactions and they actually encourage you to talk to your neighbors and react if you hear something you like/don’t like.

After that, Chris Harrison came out! He was so nice and professional. He did every take only ONCE. That was something that I was shocked by. I thought it would be a lot of re-recording which would take up a lot of the time. He would mouth the words to himself before but once they started recording he would say his lines once and move right into the show. Chris was funny and kept cracking some jokes, seamlessly moving the show along on his own. He came around during one of the breaks and talked with each group of seats. He appeared to have so much fun with it and clearly loves his job. It was cool to see him in  real life and in action!

Next all the girls came out and they introduced them. I loved seeing them in person. They were all so gorgeous. My mom kept commenting on how skinny they all were. The outfits they wore were beautiful! Since I went to college in Utah and go there often to visit, I always cheer for the Utah girls on the show. This year there were 2 of them, but Maquel wasn’t at the Women Tell All which was a bummer. I just read in this article that they actually didn’t end up inviting her to The Women Tell All. So weird to just not invite one girl.

I was so intrigued to see how much they edit. Are these girls really crazy and feisty? Does production push them to get mad at each other? It was cool to see that it was just like you see on TV but muuuuch longer. Chris would say his lines and then just ask the girls a question and they would take it from there. Chris helps move the show along by asking another question or whatever he needs to do if the conversations were getting to repetitive are going nowhere. One time when Krystal was talking to Arie, she just kept going. I think she wanted an apology from him and he was definitely not going to give it to her, so Chris finally stood up since she wasn’t listening and said “Ok, I think we are done.”

Speaking of Krystal, you know how Krystal was trying to have her Glitter thing catch on? Yeah, she did that a handful of times. It was cracking us up. At first we were feeling bad for her though because no one other then the staff really talked to her during commercial breaks. It’s just awkward to watch people fight with and attack other people. But she just didn’t help her herself as the day continued on. One of the girls asked her about why her voice was normal now but not on the show, and instead of owning it she lied and said she was sick and lost her voice. Chris responded and said “For 6 weeks?!” There were a handful of things that she said that didn’t seem genuine and she wouldn’t own up to. I wanted to like her more than I did watching the show but watching her at the live taping just didn’t help. They showed unused footage of Krystal was she was so mad after the bowling date and it was unedited so we heard her call the girls the “C word” and call Arie a “needledick”. Yikes. That did not look good for her. Watching it on tv a couple weeks later of course they had to bleep out those words so it was a lot less shocking. But to hear it that day was super awkward. So of course all the girls were pretty upset with her. When Arie was there, she asked if she could come up and talk to him. She was bugged he sent her home the way he did, and he was a little feisty with her (which I think was deserved a bit) and said now watching the show he thinks he might not have sent her home early enough. You could clearly tell Arie was bugged with her.

Like I said earlier, Casey was excited to see Tia, so when she walked in we both yelled and clapped loudly! While she was sitting in between takes, Casey yelled her name and she waved to him. My mom kept saying that she kept looking up at him after that. She was very aware that he was a big fan and her chair faced ours haha. Most of the breaks were just a couple minutes long, but around 6pm we took a 10-15 minute break and we could go use the bathrooms. It was suppose to get over at 6:30 but ended up taping until 8:15 so that’s probably why they gave us that little break. We actually didn’t end up getting to go the bathroom because too many people got in line and we had to start taping again before we got to go. While on the way to the bathroom though we walked by a lot of the girls, one being Tia. Casey got out of the line heading towards the bathroom and walked over to her. He asked if he could give her a hug and told her he was rooting for her to become the next bachelorette. I chimed in that I agreed with him! Then when we were coming back from the bathroom, we saw Nick Viall and Jared outside the studio! We were shocked to see them but were so excited!

There was almost another 2 hours of taping after that, and although I have never been so sore in my life from clapping and we all got little headaches, we were having the time of our lives. They did a little promotion for the movie Blockers, so John Cena, Leslie Mann and Ike Barinholtz ended up being there. It was way cool to see real actors, but let’s be honest, being a big Bachelor fan, I was still more excited about seeing Chris Harrison and Nick Viall haha.

All throughout the filming when they would take breaks, they would have us yell and cheer and they would throw out t-shirts. After a while, they said we were such a great crowd that they would just all give us t-shirts. I was pumped about this because since I couldn’t take pictures, I was happy to have something from this amazing day. They also congratulated us multiple times for being there, saying how hard it is to get tickets, and that many people had donated money to charity to be there. I was shocked by this because I really didn’t do anything to get these tickets and kind of lucked into them, so to hear people donated to charity to be there made it all the more special for me that I got the opportunity to be there.

The filming finally ended which was super bittersweet. I loved it and it was a once in a lifetime opportunity, but I was also ready to walk around, eat and take ibuprofen. (All we bought in was a granola bar which I ate half way through the taping and 3 ibuprofens which everyone else in our group had already taken for their headaches, so I was looking forward to getting to the car to take some medicine). Clarissa had said to me earlier in the day that we should take some roses when we left. As you can imagine there was so so many roses around the room. It was funny though because right when the filming ended they told us we weren’t allowed to take any roses, so clearly people had had our same idea before.

When we left the place it was filming, we lined up to get our Women Tell All t-shirts. We looked over to where Nick and Jared were standing before and they were STILL there. At this point it had almost been 2 hours since we saw them so we doubted they would still be there. YAY!! My mom started walking towards them and someone told her she couldn’t go over there, so she just yelled to Nick “ You were the best bachelor there ever was!” and he waved and responded “You’re the best!” My mom was a giddy little girl after that. She was so excited that he told her she was the best and that she got to see him. He was who she wanted to see in bachelor nation but we never expected him to be there. So it was a fabulous addition to the day.

The whole afternoon was so surreal. We couldn’t stop talking about all that we had seen and heard. We also were starving so we headed to get some food as soon as we could. We ended up going to a Mexican restaurant called Sharky’s that was right by our airbnb. I’m sure our starvation added it to but holy moly it was delicious. We devoured our food! We felt bad for the poor workers because we got there like 15 minutes before they close but they were still so nice to us and didn’t rush us at all.

Now this day had already been more than I could ever imagine, but then Casey suggested we go see the Greatest Showman at the Chinese Theater. It’s safe to say this has become my favorite movie as I had already seen it 7 times at this point. ( Thank you MoviePass!) My #1 celebrity crush, Zac Efron is in it so I definitely didn’t mind seeing it an 8th time. My boss from my previous job, Hannah also loves the Greatest Showman so we had tried to get together a couples times to see it together but since she lives in Logan so we had a hard time finding a time to make it work. It just so happened that this week she had a work conference in LA, so we meet up at the Chinese Theater to watch it together. Funny that we both had to travel so far to California to see it together but I’m so glad we made it work! The movie, as always, was fantastic. It is just a movie that brings a smile to my face, has a great message, that I can watch with my family which I love ( Jaedyn has seen it 3 times in theaters) and the music is fantastic.

We stayed on Hollywood Boulevard and had walked to the theater but since it was late (just after midnight) we decided to get a ride from Hannah. It took longer than it would have to walk though because we had to walk down to the parking garage, then her ticket wasn’t validated, so she had to go back up and validated. While we sat a table down by the parking garage waiting to get it validate, Clarissa says to me “Is that Derek Hough?” I couldn’t really tell what she said but I looked up and saw Julianne Hough’s husband and her best friend walking down the escalator with balloons. I remember saying something like “That’s Julianne’s husband!” Clarissa again said she thought that Derek was with them. I immediately stood up and starting walking after them. As I said above, Zac Efron is my #1 celebrity crush but Derek Hough is #2! I even joked when we got to LA that I wanted to find Derek. So I couldn’t let this moment pass without trying to talk to him. I had no clue what my plan was but I just got on the escalator going down and then I saw him at the bottom! When I got to the bottom I looked behind me to see where Casey was. Out of the two of us Casey is the bolder one, and  I was hoping to get him to ask Derek to take a picture with us. But he was only like half way down and Derek was about to walk out the door to the parking garage so I knew I had to do it myself. I said “ Derek can I can a picture with you!?” He looked a little shocked because I came out of nowhere but he said yes of course. I was so flabbergasted and didn’t say much in the moment. I did tell him I was from Idaho Falls because that’s where his grandparents live. He took 3 pictures with us which was so nice of him! He looked fantastic and was super nice! All the things you hope when running into a celebrity you admire. Not gonna lie, I teared up after I meet him. I remember walking up the escalators and saying this is the best day ever! I was so overwhelmed by the day, in a good way. I told Casey, if he has wanted to plan the perfect day for me, he couldn’t have even made this day happen!

The next day was our last day there. Casey woke up bright and earlier and went to the Santa Monica Pier (see them here) and took pictures of Our Travel Passport, local travel bloggers. Once he got back we went to do the Hollywood tour at Warner Brothers. We saw the Friends set, batmobiles, the set of Mom, buildings from some of my favorite shows, including Gilmore Girls, and learned so much about movie and tv. I loved being close to the places where so many things I have watched were filmed.

After that we took a quick trip to the Griffith Observatory and saw the Hollywood sign. Not only was the location and building itself so beautiful, but it was cool to see another place that we’ve seen in tv and movies ( hello La La Land and Dancing with the Stars). It was pretty busy there but we were still able to get some awesome pictures and enjoy the scenery.


Then we slooooowly made the 13 mile drive (which literally took over 2 hours) through LA traffic back to the airport to fly home. One mistake we made however, was thinking we probably didn’t have time to stop and eat and would just get food at the airport. We had to shuttle to a small building for our terminal and there was only one option for food. It was basically a ridiculously overpriced convenient store. Soooo experience and food was blah. Lesson learn. Make time to at least go a drive through instead of waiting to eat at the airport. You never know what your options are going to be. 

I can’t believe all these fun, exciting, new things fell into place for me. It was a short 48 hour trip but we packed so much into it, so it felt like much longer. I am forever grateful for the opportunity to go to The Bachelor: The Women Tell All and experience all that I did. What a wonderful memory!

All film images are shot on a Pentax 645n medium format film camera with Kodak Portra 400 film and developed at The FIND Lab.