When I tell people, “I met Ellen Degeneres and the Jonas Brothers,” I don’t think I even believe it myself! Every time someone asks about my experience at The Ellen Show, I have to pinch myself because it was so surreal. This blog post is an attempt at keeping the memories as real as possible for years to come.

In August, I saw Ellen’s Instagram story that said, “Apply for the first round of Season 17 tickets,” and immediately went to apply. Seeing The Ellen Show live has been on my bucket list for YEARS, but I thought it was something that would forever go unchecked. See, you can’t buy tickets to Ellen. The only way you can attend the show is if you win tickets and that always seemed so out of reach to me. Not anymore!

When you apply, you have to pick a taping date from the list of all taping dates for the month. They only tape Monday-Thursday and you can only apply for one date each month. The application is basically just entering your name and address (shown below). I picked a random day since no Monday-Thursday is really convenient and forgot about it. It said if I didn’t hear back in two weeks, I didn’t get tickets. Two weeks went by and I thought nothing of it.

A few weeks later, I saw a post on Ellen’s Facebook page advertising that registration for the next month of tapings was now open. I wasn’t going to apply because I didn’t get tickets the last time I applied, but I figured, “What’s the harm?” and applied for another random weekday taping. Again completely forgetting about it and not mentioning it to anyone because the odds I would get tickets were slim to none.

Then, I got this email from Ellen audience staff September 13th.

And yes, I 100% cried.

I sent back the information ASAP and 30 minutes later got an email saying we were confirmed for 4 guaranteed tickets to the Ellen Show! I then texted my mom and Jared saying, “We’re going to California in 3 weeks to see The Ellen Show. Is that good with everyone?,” since no one even knew I applied for tickets and the taping was only 3 weeks away. Of course they said yes! We brought Jared’s Nana along with us as our 4th guest.

We spent the next few weeks booking flights and reserving hotel rooms for our less-than-72-hour stay. We stayed at the Holiday Inn Burbank-Media Center hotel, which was on such a fun and safe main street area with tons of options for food. And of course we had to pick out the perfect outfits for the show. The information we got said to wear a trendy/business casual outfit in bright colors, which was no problem with my rainbow of a closet.

Four days before the taping, I got an email from Ellen staff that said, “Are your or anyone in your group a huge Jonas Brothers fan? If so, email us back ASAP and let us know.” Well if you know me, you know I am a MASSIVE Jonas Brothers fan. I sent back an email detailing my obsession that began when I was only 10 years old. I even included pictures of me at my first Jonas Brothers concert in 2011 and me at this past year’s concert. My mom also sent in an email saying how much she loves the Jonas Brothers. We were so excited at the possibility that the Jonas Brothers would be on the show we saw live!

The next day, I got a phone call from an Ellen audience staff member, which she claims was to “ask some questions to get to know the audience a little better.” I now realize they only called the people who sent back a response to the Jonas Brothers email to gauge if we were true fans. The girl on the phone asked who I was going to the show with, where I’m from, and who my favorite celebrities/artists are. I mentioned Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran and made a point to gush about the Jonas Brothers too. She asked if I’d ever met anyone famous and when I told her no, she asked what I might do if I did meet a celebrity I loved. I said, “I’d try to keep my cool, of course, but I’d definitely freak out.”

Before we knew it we were on a plane Sunday morning for the Monday taping. Our return flight was booked for the following Tuesday morning. We were flying to Burbank, California solely to go to the Ellen Show taping with no time to spare. We did find time to tour the Warner Brothers studio Sunday evening, which I would highly recommend. We got to see so many artifacts from different shows and movies, including Harry Potter, Aquaman, and Big Bang Theory. And you know I couldn’t pass up a photo op on the FRIENDS couch!

We were lucky enough to get to see the Ellen studio on the tour. You can’t take any pictures once you’re inside the studio for a taping so we took the opportunity on the tour to take a ton of pictures.

We were told to arrive in the waiting area (the bottom level of a parking garage) by 1 p.m. I had done enough research of other people’s blog posts beforehand to know that when you arrive doesn’t affect where you sit for the show or your spot in line so there’s no need to get there super early. We got there around 11:45 and even that was too early, but I wanted to err on the side of caution.

Once there, we sat on benches set up in the parking garage and they had a snack stand with food and drinks while you waited. Of course I had to get Ellen’s boxed water.

I was concerned at first when we sat down because I saw some people already had a big Ellen card with a number on it. I didn’t want to be missing anything so I asked one of them where they got the card. They informed me they had stand-by tickets so they had to come early that morning to possibly get a spot and were given a number then. Relieved, I sat back down with our group.

While we waited, we played some card games and watched clips of The Ellen Show on monitors in the parking garage. I had read that while you’re waiting, some staff will be milling around and if they come up and talk to you, it’s because they think you might be good on the show for a game or special segment so I was on the lookout for any staff.

PRO TIP: Don’t wear the trending color of the season when you’re trying to stand out. I felt like 1/3 of the people there were also wearing yellow as seen in this picture…

Everyone got called to line up to receive a card with a number on it. Again, this wasn’t going to determine where we sat in the audience. It was just to keep everything orderly. While in line for our card, someone came around and took each group’s photo. We did a fun photo with me on Jared’s back and Mom and Nana posing on the sides. Even though the staff told us no one would see these photos, you can never be too safe (or fun).

When we sat back down after getting our cards, they announced, “If we came up and spoke to your group, please go to the other side of the parking garage.” I was so disappointed! I didn’t even see them walking around talking to people! But not all hope was lost because then they said, “We’re going to read some names off this list. If we call your name, we want you and your whole group to go over to the other side too.” I held my breath and my name was called among about 15-20 others! I started tearing up because I was so excited!

They had us all go outside the parking garage and had us split into two groups – the names from the list and the people they talked to in the parking garage. Immediately, they went through our group of about 60 people and weeded some people out, telling them to go back to the parking garage. Jared and Nana were dismissed at that point, but Mom and I got to stay.

Then they told us what everyone in our group had the potential to be part of. They said we would be filming a digital promo package for social media about how much Ellen’s fans love the Jonas Brothers. We were told not to get too excited because we weren’t meeting the Jonas Brothers or anything, but that we would be asked a couple questions in an interview about how much we love the Jonas Brothers. They then went through our group of about 40 people and asked each group if we loved the Jonas Brothers to eliminate anyone who wasn’t enthusiastic. Mom and I played it up so big and screamed our heads off when they asked us and we got to move on to the next round!

When we were waiting for our next instructions, Mom and I were asking each other possible interview questions about the Jonas Brothers so we would be prepared for filming the promo. When I asked her who her favorite Jonas Brother is, she said, “Well it can’t be Joe because he’s yours, so I guess Nick. But maybe I should say Kevin because not as many people like him. Oh that’s good! I’ll say I like Kevin best because he’s the oldest so I have the best shot with him!” And let me tell ya what folks, every time she repeated that line to a staff member who talked to us, it made us stand out SO much!

Everyone who made it to this point – about 30 of us out of 400 total audience members – walked over into the Ellen building and sat in an air conditioned hallway awaiting filming for the promo. We sat there for about 30 minutes and got to chat with everyone around us. It was nice to be in the A/C and we got to watch past celebrity performances on The Ellen Show that were playing on the hallway monitors.

After shifting us around into groups of about seven people each, we finally started moving backstage toward the room where we would do our interviews for the social media promo video. They stopped us backstage and took one group at a time. We couldn’t see or hear anything going on as each group was taken back. Our group was 3rd to go back and we were so excited!

When we got to the green screen area, I walked in first followed by Mom and the rest of the group. They told us to go stand on the mark in the middle of the floor and face the cameras. The first thing I saw when I walked in was Ellen hiding in the corner, but she was standing so still I thought it must have been fake so I did as I was told and stood on our mark. Then she started walking toward us!

We all freaked out so much, but that quickly escalated when one of the other girls in the group saw the Jonas Brothers walk out from behind me!! I turned around and LOST IT. I couldn’t believe that I was face-to-face with one of my biggest celeb crushes (Team Joe forever)! Just as quickly as they came out, they left. They came out another time when we were all taking a picture with Ellen. You can see it all happen in this clip of what they aired on the show! They had to cut the interaction down for time’s sake, but they got the best part for sure.

It was such a whirlwind I wasn’t even sure it was real! When our group left to go to our seats we all just kept looking at each other with gobsmacked expressions saying, “What just happened?!”

We joined back up with Jared and Nana at our seats in the audience. We were about 3 rows from the back and in the righthand corner (when you’re looking at the stage). Even though we were farther back, the space is so intimate that we still had a great view of the whole stage and performance set-up.

I was amazed at how much the taping of the show just resembles, well, the show. We taped the segments in order and paused for commercial breaks. Every time we “went to commercial” we had to get up and cheer while dancing our hearts out. It was fun, but exhausting all the same. The entire thing took about an hour and 15 minutes. During one commercial break I took part in a dance-off with two other audience members!

During the show we all won two tickets each to the Jonas Brothers’ concert in California December 15th. Unfortunately, we’ll be flying out to Colorado that day, but we were still excited to win the tickets! We also got a copy of their Happiness Begins CD after they performed their song Only Human. We actually got to see them perform it twice because something went wrong with the sound for the taping the first time they sang it.

After the taping for Tuesday’s show – the show airs the day after it tapes – we filmed part of Thursday’s show as well. Two girls from our audience that staff had talked to in the parking garage got to take part in a game and we got to see two other segments for Thursday’s show. With the game they played, we all won a $150 Visa gift card!

Everything was all said and done by about 5 p.m. We left through the gift shop, but didn’t see anything we wanted to buy. Jared bought an Ellen shot glass the day before after the Warner Brothers studio tour in their gift shop.

We weren’t able to watch our show live because we were on a plane headed home Tuesday afternoon, but we had plenty of people back home recording it for us so we wouldn’t miss a thing. Ellen’s monologue during our taping – about how she is friends with George Bush even though they have different opinions – even went viral after the show. It was so cool to have been there to see such a powerful moment live.

The entire experience really could not have been better. I thought long and hard about it and decided that The Ellen Show taping was truly the best day of my life up to this point. I’m so grateful I got to experience it all with my mom, Jared, and Nana because that made it all the better.

If you ever get the chance to apply for Ellen tickets, please do it! I never in a million years would have thought I’d win tickets, but I did! It was an unforgettable trip that I will cherish for the rest of my life.