Great ideas and great advice! You may also want to participate more on flyertalk so you can post on coupon connection if needed when you get closer to actually booking your flights / and hotels.( For example once you apply for the credit cards, come back and offer your experience and what you have learned to help someone else. ) Good luck! I think you are on the right track.
PS. I vote for business for first.....

You have to remember that if she gets the credit cards, she'll have to meet the minimum spend on both the cards. She might be able to do that, but are you going to be paying attention to make sure she puts enough spend on one card and then switches to the other? If you do that, I think you end up looking really obsessed with mileage (which hopefully is true), but probably gets her suspicious.

I'd say do everything you can to keep it a surprise. I love your idea of eating at a French restaurant in NY and then surprising her with tickets to Paris. I'd stick with coach (unless you know she really can't handle flying that way) and then splurge on the hotel/dining (and get the credit cards mentioned by others).

Good luck!

Great thinking. You can decide even a few days before whether to tell her or not. Or, tell her you're going to Quebec.

While I agree with lwildernorva that my days of flying coach TATL are over, I would say don't bother with trying for business on this trip. It will be special enough! And, I second the advice to consider an apartment (especially on Ile St. Louis). Try getting a reservation at Frenchie's- very reasonable but great restaurant.

This kind of got lost in the mix here, but I wanted to bring it up since it's a fantastic idea (two fantastic ideas, actually) which would let you do most of what you wanted.

A pseudo itinerary could look like this:
ORD/DTW -> NYC (stop) -> CDG
CDG -> ORD/DTW (stop) -> HNL/LIH

Since stopovers can be 24+ hours, you could get your dinner in NYC and then surprise her with the second half of the outbound. (Some creativity may be necessary to "hide" the NYC-CDG seg of the itinerary from her but totally worth it IMO. Though you would be saying "I wonder how the French food is in Paris? Why don't we find out RIGHT NOW!") Then, on the way back, count your home base as a "stopover" for weeks, months, whatever, then continue - on the same award! - to Hawaii. You'd then only need to pay for the fare back from Hawaii, perhaps with miles you've accumulated in the meantime.

If you can meet the spend on the two AA cards somewhat easily, I'd also take up the advice provided elsewhere on this thread and look into gaining Hyatt points, either through the Hyatt card or one of the transfer partner cards like the Sapphire Preferred. There are several other threads in MilesBuzz! that will be helpful with this.

Best of luck and early congratulations!

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.601 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

"CDG -> ORD/DTW (stop) -> HNL/LIH"

CDG-ORD (stop) - Hawaii would work, but CDG-DTW (stop) - Hawaii would not. The free stopover can only be at the North American "gateway." Since neither AA nor its partners offers a direct flight from Europe to DTW, DTW cannot be a gateway.

Don't ignore all these great values but don't get crazy about them either. You and your GF still have lives to live. If the best you do is nonstop ORD-CDG, good for you. If you can tack on a stop in NYC on the way out and/or the first half of a trip later, great. Nice options to know about, but if they don't fit your life now, no sweat. Just don't forget about them later. The best thing about the techniques you learn here is just how far you can stretch the considerable money you should earn as a lawyer into luxurious travel later.

to get to Paris over New Years, you're going to have to book the tickets in the next few months, late Feb by the latest, I would imagine. Delta probbaly won't have any low level availability, ever, for those dates. Just get the Citi cards, get the flight in coach class and be there for new years. If you can delay, go for business class, but I would say coach + new years is better than March + business class.

Try to get the paris vendome also via chase. amazing hotel and definetly worth the extra hits on your credit report.

Gf and I went to paris this past September using AA miles we obtained through the two 75k offer. We went economy and flight was a nightmare cause we couldn't sleep at all, ended up being up for almost 36 straight hours, when we got to the hotel, we crashed for like 6 hours. However, I would do it again if we had to because Paris was amazing. We also stayed at the Hyatt Madeleine using the Hyatt two free nights, the Vendome wasn't available. I agree with staying at a nicer hotel cause you'll be there for much longer than your 8 hour flight in economy. Even though my post isn't convincing to do economy, I would spring for the surprise and go for the two citi cards, get the economy tix and either the Hyatt card or the Sapphire card for your hotel nights, or both, thats 4 nights at the vendome

Good luck with everything OP! I am like you and just discovered all the value on this website! Keep us posted and I am sure you can hit your goal!

Isn't it like a 7-8 hours flight to Paris? Why didn't you sleep for 36 hours? Also, what type of people are sitting in economy on a flight to Paris? I assume it's not the same level of potential characters on say a random Southwest economy domestic flight, no? Seat and amenities aside, I find one of the biggest gambles in economy is the type of people that you might have to sit next to.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.601 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

AA flies mostly 767-300's to/from CDG, although one of the JFK-CDG-JFK flights uses a 757.

The 767-300 is configured 2-3-2 in Coach, so if you select your seats early enough, you won't have anyone else sitting next to you. (The 757, on the other hand, is configured 3-3 in Coach.)

Not so unusual. On the day of departure, you'll probably wake up at your usual hour (6-9 a.m.). The flights to Europe are generally overnight so you'll do a full day in the US. If you don't sleep well on planes (my unfortunate tendency), you'll remain awake all night, landing in Paris at daybreak or slightly later (time zone difference Chicago to Paris is seven hours--flight is roughly 8 hours to Europe, 9 back--headwinds flying westward).

Follow the standard advice to get yourself on the new schedule as soon as possible, and you'll not get to sleep until 9 p.m. or so Paris time, more than thirty hours after you awoke the day before. Get a little kick of adrenaline as I did on last month's trip to London, and you might stay up past midnight.

Thus, the argument for some sort of sleep medication in coach or flying business class.

Coach to Paris, then save up miles for Business/First for Honeymoon!

This was thinking as well but I am just a bumbling guy.

Since you have 15K Delta miles and your gf has 50K miles, you might want to each consider opening a checking account up at Suntrust. I'll save you all the T&C's, but I think the balanced banking option is the lowest required checking account they will issue the Delta Check Card to, which is a Mastercard. The fees are $12/month if you dont keep $3K in there each month, and the annual fee is $55. (You used to be able to get that card with the Student Checking but it looks like they quickly closed that loophole up).

Anyways you get 5K miles each for signing up, but more importantly you get 2 Delta miles for every $1 you spend, which is better than any card out there, credit or debit. Since you have the whole year to spend $, that may be an option if you guys anticipate spending $. Or maybe you know someone who is making a big purchase like a car or something and they will let you pay for it with your card. Just a thought since you already have 65K Delta Miles already.