Valentine's Day deserves its own paragraph in this city, because two things collide on 14 February. The first is that mid-February is the absolute peak of South Florida's visitor season — A1A along the beach, Las Olas Boulevard and the SE 17th Street corridor are at their most congested, every beach hotel is full, and restaurant tables were booked weeks earlier. The second is supply. The overwhelming majority of cut flowers sold in the United States arrive through Miami International Airport, about twenty-five miles south of here, which is a real advantage for Broward florists most of the year: the roses are fresher and closer than in almost any other American market. In the ten days before Valentine's, that same pipeline is the tightest it gets all year, and the shops are buying against the entire country. The practical translation is simple. Order by 11 February for a 14 February delivery, accept a morning window, and if you want red roses specifically, say so early rather than on the day. Same-day on 14 February is possible but it is the one date on the calendar where we will not promise a particular stem.
Discretion matters more on this occasion than on any other, and there are a few Fort Lauderdale-specific versions of it. A delivery to a shared apartment or a roommate situation should be timed for when the recipient is home, not for the middle of a workday, and a mobile number lets the driver call rather than hand a romantic bouquet to whoever answers the door. A delivery to a workplace is a public act — the downtown office towers on Andrews Avenue, the Cypress Creek corridor in 33309 and the Plantation corporate park all route through lobbies where a bouquet gets noticed and commented on, so it is a great gesture for an established relationship and a risky one for a new or private one. If the card should not name you, or should not name us, write exactly that on the order and the shop follows it. Our benches hand-write the card at no charge, and for romance orders they will leave a sender line off entirely if you ask.
A large share of the romance orders that land on this grid are placed by someone who is not in Florida. That is a function of who lives here: seasonal residents, recent transplants, partners working a rotation offshore or at sea out of Port Everglades, and long-distance couples where one half moved south. If you are ordering from another state and have never stood on the street in question, four details do all the work. The ZIP code, because Broward's city lines are not where outsiders think they are — a 33314 address answers to Fort Lauderdale in conversation and to Davie on a map, and 33068 sits on a municipal seam. The unit number, because the downtown and beach buildings are concierge-run and a tower without a unit is a dead end. A mobile number, so a driver can call instead of guessing which of two identical doors is the right one. And an honest answer about whether anybody will be home at two in the afternoon, which in a two-income Broward household is usually no. Give us those and a remote order behaves exactly like a local one. Leave them out and you are relying on a stranger's improvisation.