As you can tell, we were committed to having a new bed by the end of the day. The futon was moved out of the way, and the new bed frame was already set up. Earlier in the day, we had stopped by Mattress Gallery (newly purchased as a factory store by Simmons) to buy a mattress. The first thing we asked was "If we buy a mattress right now, can you have it delivered today?"
There are a couple things we looked for in a mattress: we wanted it to be firm, have at least 700 coils (which will help keep it from sagging later), and with no pillow-top (which is an extra pad on top of the mattress that tends to give out well before the rest of the mattress).
We bought the mattress at 10 AM. They had it delivered by 3:00 PM.