And you thought flowers and a nice card were enough.
Gentlemen, Middle Valley resident Brandon Harris has raised the bar when it comes to surprising your wife for her birthday. A week ago, Harris gave his wife, Patience, a day to remember on her 30th birthday with a day full of surprises that was part scavenger hunt, part "This is Your Life" and lots of gift opening.
As if that were not enough, he ended the day by telling Patience that she and her three best friends were going to spend this past weekend at Disney World. Without the spouses or the kids.
And she never saw it coming. Which may be the biggest surprise of all.
"My husband gets really excited when he plans stuff, so he always spills the beans," she says. "He can't wait, so for him to do that, I couldn't believe I didn't figure it out. I really thought they [her family] had forgotten my birthday."
Harris, who got the idea for the hunt from doing similar events for youth at his church, had hardly forgotten. In fact, he spent about six months obsessing over every detail of his surprise, including the clues and how they would be delivered, the time slots assigned to the 30 or so people who were lined up to share a special birthday moment with his wife, and the routes she would take throughout the day to find her next surprise.
"It was kind of tricky, but everything stayed on schedule," says Harris, who works at Southern Champion Tray in the purchasing department. "I was pleasantly surprised. I was waiting for disaster."
Nichole Baugh holds Patience Harris' next clue in her scavenger hunt. Patience, a stay-at-home mother of three kids age 3, 6 and 10, got her first clue at breakfast the morning of her birthday.
"I told her it was a scavenger hunt and that she'd be getting surprises all day," her husband said. "I don't think she fully understood."
It became a little more clear on her first stop at 7:45 a.m. She'd been told she needed to go into her son Sawyer's kindergarten class. His teacher, Gina Potter, happens to be a long-time close friend and she held up the first of many signs that read "30 Years of ______"; in this case, the filled-in word was "Beautiful." Each person throughout the day filled in his or her own favorite Patience characteristic and gave her a gift to open. The people who called from out of town mailed the gifts ahead of time.
Potter also gave the birthday girl her next clue and the game was on.
"Cramming 30 people into one day was tough," Brandon Harris says.
He also had to figure out the route so Patience wasn't crisscrossing the county, and he realized fairly quickly that the clues needed to be easy to decipher.
"I figured out this was not the time to prove I could send her all over the place or have her get off schedule trying to figure a clue out."
The clues included things like an address for the next stop or an old picture of Patience with the person she would see next in person or on a Facetime or Skype call. Lunch was scheduled at Rembrandt's Coffee House in Bluff View, for example, and while Patience could figure out the address from the previous clue, she had no idea who would be there or who might call.
Riding along with her throughout the day were best friends Bayleigh Lowe, Kristy Hicks and Nicole Baugh, who were responsible for taking pictures, delivering the pre-placed gifts on cue and driving. Brandon Harris had even thought to provide the girls a mixtape filled with hits from the last 30 years.
"It was a lot of fun," Baugh says. "I thought it was awesome. She had said all year long that she did not want a party and just wanted to hang with friends and family. This way she got to spend time with people and actually talk to them."
Many people on the list were family or people Patience sees on a regular basis, but some were not.
"I think the fact that he [Brandon] had gone to the trouble to do out-of-town people was really special," she says. "Talking to my brother-in-law in California, who is going to graduate school, was really special. We talked on the speakerphone in the car and he started crying and then I started crying and then the whole car was crying."
One of the posters that Patience Harris' friends made for her 30th birthday is shown.So is Patience now obligated to top her husband's surprise?
"You'd do good to find 10 friends for me, much less 30," he says.
"That's not true. He's so silly," his wife counters. "Here's the beauty of our relationship; I am not the romantic. He is. Always has been. And he's very introverted and would not like something like this.
"He's so sweet," she adds. "Believe it or not, he's as good a daddy as he is a husband. I got really lucky."
The day ended with Brandon Harris, Lowe, Baugh and Hicks telling Patience about the trip to Orlando and Disney World.
"That was tough to plan because [Patience] keeps up with the finances," he says. "I had to get $10 and $20 here and there every time I used my debit card to hide it."
Baugh says the whole day was fun, but the surprise at the end was extra special.
"We haven't ever really traveled together," she says. "She was screaming like a crazy woman."
Contact Barry Courter at bcourter@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6354.