How wonderful! Are you looking to surprise your wife? You might need her input a bit more, while versatile different machines are designed for different tasks although we can get by on some things.
After "what is it you want it to do", first consideration is always price. Sewing machines can be very affordable or into car territory... so our suggestions would be based on that. For those that say it brands depends on service departments, Anchorage is pretty well handled with the various vendors, about an hour+ or so away. Space is another issue. There are "quilting" machines that sit on a table, and there are "quilting" machines that have 12' long rails and are about 4' deep. When we say "embroidery machines" we are generally thinking of machines that can piece but are more dedicated to making things like logos or pictures, and not just fancy stitches.
Costco usually has a pretty reasonable deal on a machine, a month or so ago they had a "lower" model available for around $300 which is now not on line. They are currently carrying Janome machines, I got a Brother from them and it was a good little plastic machine for 5-7 years. The Janomes they currently offer are both over 1k last time I looked. You see the one has a larger what we call "throat space", for those of us who quilt (or have embroidery machines) typically we want the largest space we can get.
https://www.costco.com/sewing-machines.html
I mostly grew up in Alaska btw, but moved down south to the Seattle region back in 1983. I was able to go back a year or so ago and visited my BFF and we went to the State Fair among other things. Very vibrant quilter community up there, lots of little local shops. Was a family joke that my cat Palmer was called "Little Wasilla" by the others. He was named after Palmer Courtland, the character on All My Children and not after any town anyway, but that's part of the joke.
edit: About price, the Bernina I have retailed for about 10k new, even now used and10 years later it goes for 2-3k. But it isn't working and so I am using a bottom-of-the-line Brother that originally sold for under $100 because working beats non-working every day of the week! To get the Bernina fixed/serviced is probably going to be closer to $300, which I would normally use as my budget to buy a machine, but I can't get one with the deep throat, lighting, built in walking foot, stitch regulator and all the bells and whistles I've grown attached to.
The point is, there are many different levels of needs and many different machines with many different price points. I say to get what you need but always buy the best tools you can afford.