Hi, newbie here -- so please excuse me if my question sounds dumb. Here goes...

My wife and I are Gold Elite with enough miles saved up to fly business (or first class) roundtrip to Italy in October of 2009. We'll be flying from DFW to Milan and returning from Naples back to DFW (or visa versa depending on what flights we can get). My plan is to contact American at the earliest possible date to book our flights (I believe around 320 days prior). Any special tips that will help us secure our seats on these flights? Are the chances decent that we will be able to use our miles for the flights? I'm banking on it! Thanks for your input.