St. Charles couple giving away two tickets to Taylor Swift show

For Taylor Swift fans who were unsuccessful in their attempt to purchase concert tickets for her tour next year because of the overwhelming demand for tickets, St. Charles’ Meg and Mike Whitted want to provide some hope this holiday season.

The couple is giving away two tickets to one of Swift’s shows in June at Soldier Field in Chicago. Swift will be performing June 2-4 at Soldier Field.

“It’s a great way to give back to our community,” Meg Whitted said. “We’re excited. I hope somebody that really, really wants them enters this giveaway and wins them.”

A winner will be announced at 5 p.m. Jan. 4 on Facebook. To enter, go to mrswhitted.com.

“It will be fun to see the joy of whoever wins these tickets and how excited they’re going to be when they pick them up,” Mike Whitted said. “It will be great.”

The winner will be randomly picked.

The Whitteds were unsuccessful in their efforts to purchase a ticket for their 12-year-old daughter, Suzie. They bought the tickets they are giving away through a resale site.

“All of my girlfriends, all of these moms that I’m friends with and all their daughters, we all went through the same thing,” Meg Whitted said. “The kids were in school expecting all the parents to get the tickets. So we all got a presale code. It was a presale fan code. We registered online and waited for the sale to start. And almost immediately, within 30 minutes, there was an issue with the sale, so they shut the whole sale down and said there was a problem and that they would let us know when it begins again. But you could not leave this site. So we were all on our phones for another six hours. Some people missed work or had to cancel meetings to be able to attentively look at their phones.”

After waiting for hours, the sale finally started again and Meg Whitted tried to purchase tickets. But the system wouldn’t sell her the tickets.

“Nobody knows really what happened, but all of my friends had the same thing where we were all putting tickets in our cart and they wouldn’t let you buy them. … Now, resale sites are the only way to get a ticket. The tickets are selling at five to 10 times the original amount, which is outrageous,” Meg Whitted said.

The contest is a continuation of the couple’s community efforts. That includes bringing joy to women who are facing struggles with fresh flowers and a card to let them know that someone is thinking of them and they are loved.

The couple also supports Living Well Cancer Resource Center in Geneva and CASA Kane County, a nonprofit, volunteer organization that advocates for abused and neglected children within the county’s juvenile court system.

Meg Whitted wishes she could give Taylor Swift tickets to anyone who wanted them.

“I would love to buy a ticket for everyone to make sure that everybody could go,” she said. “That would be really awesome.”