How to add a new field to the Blog form?

Team,

I'm a total noob hoping someone could help me out on my elgg site. I have a custom form below with an input/location field but always return an "array" value when I click on save:

$tags_label = elgg_echo('Location');
$tags_input = elgg_view('input/location', array(
'name' => 'tags',
'id' => 'blog_tags',
'value' => $vars['tags']

Is it because the location input is too long? e.g. Madison Avenue, New York, NY, United States

It however shows the correct value when i hit Save again...

Result: Location Array

Please shed some light... I read about foreach loop or something but would like to get insights from the pros...