Allyce Patten has at her fingertips pretty much everything a man could think of to make his mate happy today: flowers, scented candles, champagne, chocolate-covered strawberries, spa treatments.
But it's what you guys haven't thought of that makes Patten so good at her job.
As "romance concierge" for the Ritz-Carlton hotel in uptown Charlotte, she is responsible for turning everything from marriage proposals to anniversary celebrations into experiences that will - as she puts it - "blow a couple out of the water."
For Patten, every day is Valentine's Day. Or, at least, every weekend.
"On average, every Friday and Saturday, 80 percent of our guests are celebrating a wedding night, proposal or anniversary," she says, "and I would probably say 90 percent of my job is making that romantic evening for somebody. Of course, everybody's idea of romance is different, so ... I just like to get to know the guest.
" 'How did you two meet? What does she like? What are her favorite flowers? What are her favorite foods? Where has she dreamed about going? What made you think that she was the one? When you propose to her, if money was not an object, what would be your dream?' Then it's like, How can we create that for them? How do we make it come true?"
Patten, 25, who graduated from Johnson & Wales University in 2009, has been working at the Ritz-Carlton since it opened on Trade Street that fall. In two short years, she has personalized romantic experiences for hundreds of couples.
They can be simple and straightforward: Once, a groom who was a pilot planned to fly his bride to Jamaica for their honeymoon, so Patten had the pastry team create a huge chocolate sculpture featuring an airplane, the words "Bahama Bound," palm trees, coconut and mango.
They can be more involved: A couple was springing a surprise wedding on their family on Thanksgiving Day. It was such a big secret that they hadn't even hired a photographer. "I just whipped out my camera," Patten says, "started taking pictures, and by the end of their stay we had a DVD of all of the pictures in a movie-type slideshow, as well as we made a photo book for them."
They can be painstakingly detailed: For a 55th wedding anniversary, Patten and her team made a replica of the lily bouquet the woman had 55 years earlier, decorated their room in their wedding color (peach), and re-created the dinner from their reception.
Patten once recruited a musically inclined bellman to play the piano for a couple when the man's proposal was falling through. She has seen a normally stone-faced security officer get misty-eyed over a proclamation of love. She has run to Harris Teeter with a pastry chef to grab emergency ingredients for a last-minute creative concoction.
How much extra does this cost a guest? Nothing, Patten says. "We're all empowered (to spend) a certain amount of money per day per guest, and you can spend that on one person and use it all for one day, or you can split it up. But nobody's going to tell you, 'Oh, you've reached your maximum, you can't make (this person's) dreams come true.' "
Her own love story
She knows all the tricks of the romantic trade.
But her boyfriend, Dave Lieberman, couldn't ask her for advice as he was crafting his proposal last spring.
He did, however, have the element of surprise on his side: The two were to go on a cruise last summer. She figured it would happen then. But Lieberman, Patten says, is not very patient - "He just can't keep anything inside." So when the jeweler called April 29 and told him the ring was in, he immediately went and picked it up, then immediately started calling her.
"I'm trying to get stuff done at work, and he calls, seriously, every five minutes. At one point, he told me we were having leftovers for dinner, and I'm like, 'Why does he think I care that we're having leftovers?' I'm like, 'OK, got it, leftovers, I'll be home in a little bit. I got the memo.' "
When Patten finally came home, "he pulls out this box, and immediately I think of these earrings I've been dying for, and I'm thinking 'Yes! Yes, this is great!' And he just starts talking about our relationship and how much he loved me and loved my family and all this, and in my head I'm like, 'Oh gosh, I can't wait for those earrings, this is the longest story that you're telling me for these earrings.'
"So he gets down on one knee, and the only thing that ran through my head was, 'This isn't funny if those are earrings and you're down on one knee.' And he couldn't open the box. He had the hinge towards me, and I couldn't help him because my body was frozen."
'Wave of emotion'
When he finally wrestled it open, Patten thought, " 'Oh my gosh, this is the moment every girl dreams about.' It was this wave of emotion." All she could get out was, "Yes."
"I know I gave him a hard time about making it with fireworks and all of this, and I'm sure he was just like, 'Great, thanks!' But at the end of the day it was him, ... it worked for us. And if I was a guest at Ritz-Carlton, I would hope that that would be the experience that I would have, where it was - it was us. He couldn't open the box, he couldn't wait."
They are to be married in San Francisco on 10-11-12.
