A few weeks ago, Nicole and I were lucky enough to take an awesome trip to New York! We joined our good friends, The McGowans, on this trip. The whole point of this trip was to see Billy Joel perform at Madison Square Garden. [Side note, we post tons of photos during our vacations on instagram, so make sure to follow us @kevkberg and @nicolehberg!] Despite some last second travel issues (ice canceled our flight out of Dallas), we made it to New York just as the Super Bowl was ending. We met up with the McG’s that night for a late night snack and a few drinks. The next morning, we met up for breakfast at the Starlight Café and then headed to Brooklyn! It was a crazy snowy day, and it was such a great time walking across the Brooklyn Bridge in the snow! I had a great time capturing pictures of the bridge. I loved these images so much it was totally worth slipping and falling (TWICE!) and cracking my phone. We were lucky in that one of the 5 other people on the bridge was kind enough to grab a group photo for us…and even more lucky that it turned out great! I’m not sure which but one of these snowy bridge pictures is going to be hanging on a wall in our house soon!

After we crossed the bridge, we grabbed a few couple pictures in the snow. We may have also built a snowman in a nearby park and named him Olaf as we are all huge Frozen fans!

That night we hit up the Billy Joel concert, and it was pretty epic! We posted a few instagram pics from the show since we couldn’t take the big camera into MSG. The next day, we headed to Central Park for couple pictures in the park! It’s nice to travel with photog buddies so we can pass the cameras back and forth! That way, we all end up with super awesome vacation portraits! Central Park covered in the snow was such a great thing to experience. But we are planning to go back one day when it’s not freezing cold!

After Central Park, we headed to The Empire State Building. We made it just in time for sunset and were able to capture some gorgeous images! Again, one of these images is getting printed size huge!

On our last full day, we headed to Broadway to see Ian McKellen, Partick Stewart, and Billy Crudup perform in Waiting for Godot! Nicole picked this play to see as soon as she learned we were going to NYC, and I’m so happy she picked this one! Our seats were fantastic (again credit Nicole for being an awesome planner!) as we sat in the second row! But the best part of this play was the stage door experience! Nicole had searched online and found out that all of the guys were greeting fans and signing autographs after the show, so, before the play started, we found the stage door and planned our exit to be right up front when they came out! We saw Wicked on Broadway a few years ago and bought the poster and had the performers sign it, so we were really hoping to do the same with Ian, Patrick, and Billy! Mission accomplished! First out was Billy Crudup, who just so happens to star in one of my all time favorite movies, Big Fish! I was excited to meet Billy and had to tell him how much I love Big Fish. (Although after seeing the pictures from our stage door experience I got a bit jealous seeing how big of a smile Billy gave Nicole, but then again that’s what happens when your wife is a super babe!) Billy was really a great guy and, thanks to some playful banter from Mack, he stopped and chatted us up a bit! Such a great experience to meet someone from one of your favorite movies! Oh yeah, and then came out the big guys, Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart! I’m a huge X-Men fan, so it was really cool to meet these guys! Plus, they were so genuinely nice it was unbelievable! They signed every playbill and poster that was put in front of them, asked us where we were from and thanked us for coming out in such bad weather! Couldn’t have been a better stage door experience!!! (Big props to Chelsea and Nicole for manning the camera and grabbing some great shots!)

The last image is of Nicole and I holding another Broadway poster, as we added a second Broadway show to our day when we bought tickets to Cinderella in the cab on the way to Waiting for Godot. It was only the second performance with Carly Rae Jepsen as Cinderella and Fran Drescher as the evil stepmother. Plus, it was buy one get one, so it seemed like a great way to spend the night! The show was cute and Carly was fantastic, and since we saw the stagedoor for Cinderella the night before from a nearby pie place, we knew where to head for autographs! Fran didn’t sign any autographs, but Carly sure did! She also posed for a selfie with Nicole and Chelsea (as seen on instagram)! So we now have a signed poster for each Broadway play we’ve been to!

Thanks for sharing in our vacation adventures! Wedding season will be starting up very soon, so this blog will be hopping with some gorgeous images before you know it!