Dove Awards

So I can check off something on my life to-do list: I went to the Dove Awards last week! The Dove Awards is kind of like the grammys of christian music. I've always wanted to go and so this year, I proposed to my best friend Amanda that we go for her 30th birthday. She did so much to help with my 30th shindig that I wanted to repay her with something fun. So back in January I presented her with the idea and so we were off!
We left on Wednesday morning. We had an unexpected visitor: Magellan. He was our GPS navigator. It was pretty amazing. We sat in Amanda's driveway and we entered the address of our hotel. Magellan got us there! It was pretty cool!!
Upon our arrival, we wanted to scope out the scene. So we headed over to the Grand Ole Opry House to pick up our tickets and scout out the "famous people". That was our goal...to meet some of our favorite christian artists!! So here's that journey:

We knew this woman was just had to be famous, but we didn't recognize her.


Sure enough, she was the opening act for the whole show!! (we still didn't know who she was)


So after we got settled in to our seats (it was quite a hike to get there) we started taking some pictures. Here we are modeling our Dove Award souvenirs!






After 3 hours of pre-show activity (all the really interesting awards like instrumental album of the year) the televised show began. The show started with none other than Tobymac!! It doesn't get any better than that. Unfortunately, neither do our pictures :(




Kirk Franklin and Mandisa (from American Idol) joined him on stage.


This picture is not going to be clear or mean much, but I thought it was pretty cool. It's a picture of Michael W. Smith sitting in the front row, a few seats down from Steven Curtis Chapman! Two of the biggest names in christian music...legends, if you will. They were just sitting there with their wives like it was no big deal. Like they were just out to dinner or something. Then they would just turn around and talk to the people sitting behind them like they were catching up with an old friend.


Famous people fascinate me!

The next performance was Mac Powell (from Third Day), Brian Litrell (former BackStreet Boy), Steven Curtis Chapman, & some other guy.





So, after that it was just a bunch of people that we didn't know. But after the show, we made our way down to the floor to see if we could get a glimpse of any famous people that we might get a picture of. No such luck. So we just took pictures of ourselves in front of the stage.



Well, a little disappointed, we decided it was time to leave and get something to eat. However, one thing we didn't count on was a monsoon as we were getting ready to leave! Of course, the car was on the other side of the world, so we literally had to walk sloshing through the rain to the car. Here I am...a drowned & disappointed river rat :(


Hungry and wet, we decided to hit the hotspots of Nashville...in hopes of maybe running into someone famous!! We pulled our handy-dandy friend, Magellan and plugged in the address of "The Acorn", a Nashville favorite.


Magellan told us it was about 10 miles away. Not too bad...so we thought. One hour later...we ended up back at the hotel with a bag of chips from the vending machine :(

So, day one was quite the adventure. On the morning of day two, we decided to start the day off with a great breakfast at the Pancake Pantry. Yummy!! We were so excited! But little did we know the treat that was awaiting us.

The Pancake Pantry is a Nashville favorite, so it was no surprise that when we got there it took us a while to find a parking spot and that the line was out the door. We didn't care, so we went ahead and got in line. Well, 2 spots ahead of us in line, guess who it was...Brian Litrell! He was one of the hosts at the Dove Awards. We couldn't believe it!! He was holding his little boy and in line and standing with his wife and in-laws. We felt weird going up to him while he was holding his little boy so we just stood in awe. He and his family were seated and a few minutes later we were too...a few feet away from him!! Well, we didn't want to go up to him while he was eating, so once again we just sat and ate our pancakes in awe. After we finished, we walked outside and hung around for a little bit in hopes that he would be right behind us. Sure enough...he was. But once again, we felt weird because he was with his family. So we followed him to the parking lot (which is also where we parked) and his car was parked just so that we had to pass it to leave. So on our way out, I rolled down the window and said, "Brian! You did a great job last night". He was very nice and said, "Thank you. I don't have my make up on today." Here's us after our "famous person" encounter.


Amanda was so excited she cried!!


That was the highlight of our trip!! So after that we headed back to GA where we encountered a traffic jam, where we got a little bored.




We had a great time!!