A six-year-old girl and her mother, both Taylor Swift fans, found themselves in luck after winning tickets to see her perform live in Dublin.
Aria and her mother Nicole McDaid were understandably upset when they were unable to grab tickets from the general sale.
Nicole tried everything, from looking up resale sites to entering raffle contests, to be able to see the gig.
“We were down to our last hope and we ended up entering this raffle as a bit of a last roll of the dice,” she told the BBC.
Nicole described having to leave in the middle of her shift at the Chinese restaurant she works at because of how hard she was crying after winning the lucky draw and how patrons in the restaurant tried offering to buy the tickets off her.
“I just put down for a random number, 34, and I was watching it live streamed in my work,” she said.
“I work in a Chinese restaurant, but I actually had to go outside because I just couldn’t stop crying.”
Taylor Swift will kick off the long-awaited Dublin leg of her Eras tour on 28 June at Aviva Stadium.
Nicole said she gave the news to her daughter over the phone and the child couldn’t believe she would be going to see her favourite popstar.
“Aria could hear me on the phone crying and actually asked me: ‘What is wrong with mammy?’ I still don’t think she believes it. She probably won’t believe it until she’s there.”
Aria is said to be “really excited” to go to the concert while Nicole is happy at the thought of wearing their matching friendship bracelets and sharing a “mum and daughter moment together.”
Swift’s Eras tour drew several A-listers for the London leg, including her NFL star boyfriend Travis Kelce, Bridgerton lead Nicola Coughlan, Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness, model Cara Delevigne, Barbie director Greta Gerwig, and actors Tom Cruise, Hugh Grant and Jamie Dornan.
Also in attendance to celebrate his 42nd birthday was Prince William along with his three children.
Videos on TikTok showed the Prince of Wales dancing to “Shake It Off” and Swift shared a selfie with the royals and her boyfriend, captioning the post: “Happy Bday M8!”
You can read The Independent’s five-star review of Swift’s first UK show in Edinburgh here.
