Romance delivered in Bergenfield is a semi-public event, and that is the first thing to plan around. The borough is roughly three square miles of one- and two-family houses inside a single ZIP, 07621 — short blocks off Washington Avenue, New Bridge Road, Clinton Avenue and Prospect Avenue, with driveways instead of lobbies and, on a great many of those blocks, two households behind one street number. Add a housing pattern in which multi-generational living is ordinary rather than unusual — this is one of the county's main centres of Filipino settlement, with sizeable Korean and Hispanic populations alongside it — and the practical consequence is that mid-afternoon there is usually somebody home — just not always the somebody you had in mind. A bouquet for a new relationship can be handed to a parent, an aunt, a younger brother or the tenant upstairs before it reaches the person whose name is on the card. Sometimes that is delightful. Sometimes it is the wrong week for it. Decide which before you order. If you want the delivery to be private, send it to where the person actually is on their own — a workplace counter on Washington Avenue, a school or office out of town, or a time of day you know they will answer — and if you want it to be seen, a Bergenfield front step will manage that without any help from you. Either way, write the half of the house in plain words, because two unlabelled bells and a side door off a shared driveway is a normal Bergenfield address.
The other thing worth getting right is what you are actually buying. A designer's-choice photograph shows a mood and a palette without committing to every stem, so if a particular flower or colour carries meaning in your relationship — the rose you always buy, the colour she wore, the flower from the first trip — say so as a requirement before you approve the order, and ask what the shop will do if that stem is unavailable on the day. Also check whether the container in the picture is included, because a photograph of a bouquet in a glass vase is not automatically a promise of the vase. Tell the shop which details can vary and which cannot; that one sentence is the difference between a design you recognise and a design you have to be gracious about. Then think about where it is going to be seen. If the evening is out, it will be out of the borough: Cedar Lane in Teaneck immediately south, Palisade Avenue in Englewood, Broad Avenue in Palisades Park, Main Street in Fort Lee — all small-restaurant strips where a bouquet arriving at a host stand in the afternoon is a liability rather than a surprise, so send to the house in the morning and let the flowers travel with the person. If it is a proposal, the flowers are something you carry: the overlooks along the Palisades Interstate Parkway at Englewood Cliffs, the water at Overpeck County Park down past Teaneck, Van Saun County Park in Paramus and Cooper's Pond inside the borough are all places people ask the question, and not one of them is an address a van can deliver to. Have the bouquet sent to your own place first, the morning of, and take it with you.