An anniversary in North Richland Hills has a predictable shape, and it is not a hotel-lobby shape. The city is a residential middle-class suburb of about seventy thousand people in the Tarrant County Mid-Cities, and it does not have a luxury hotel of its own — the lodging along Loop 820 and Boulevard 26 is practical, limited-service, and built for contractors and visiting relatives rather than for a twentieth anniversary. So the evening happens elsewhere. Couples drive or take Trinity Metro's TEXRail from the Smithfield or Iron Horse stations in the city out to Grapevine Main Street or into downtown Fort Worth, and the flowers go to the house first: to a kitchen island in 76182 off Davis Boulevard, to a dining table in 76180 near Rufe Snow Drive, to the HomeTown grid off Mid-Cities Boulevard, to a 1970s ranch house on Holiday Lane. The most-ordered anniversary delivery in this market is a home delivery timed to land in the afternoon, before the couple leaves, so the arrangement is waiting when they come back.
Where the night itself happens is the other half of the order, and the destinations are real and close. Grapevine is fifteen minutes east: the Gaylord Texan Resort on Gaylord Trail, Hotel Vin on Main Street, and the Main Street wine rooms and tasting rooms that anchor Grapevine's downtown. Downtown Fort Worth is about the same distance southwest: the Omni Fort Worth on Houston Street, The Worthington Renaissance and the Kimpton Harper on Main, the Hilton Fort Worth on Main Street — the former Hotel Texas, where President Kennedy spent his last night — plus Bass Performance Hall on Commerce Street for an anniversary built around a concert, and Reata on Houston Street for the dinner after. The Stockyards adds Hotel Drover in Mule Alley and the Stockyards Hotel on East Exchange Avenue, with Cattlemen's Steak House, Lonesome Dove and H3 Ranch in walking distance and Joe T. Garcia's on North Commerce a short drive away. Southeast, Loews Arlington sits in the stadium district, and the in-airport Hyatt Regency DFW and Grand Hyatt DFW cover couples flying out the next morning. Hotel deliveries need the guest's name as the reservation reads plus a check-in time, because a bouquet handed to a front desk six hours early is a bouquet sitting in a back office.