Connie, how soon is the birthday?
If you purchased the tickets from someone like Ticketmaster, maybe you can call and BEG, BEG, BEG to have them sent early. They accomodated a similar request for me - although I will admit that it was several years ago.
Or, another idea is to just make some sort of fun gift certificate on the computer to give your friend instead of the actual tickets.
Or, if you are really bold - give your friend a notice of some sort to "reserve the date" with details to follow in "whatever time frame" i.e. in 2 months or 3 weeks, or whatever the timeframe is. And then give them the tickets when they arrive.
HAVE FUN!
