Hi and welcome!
We have got one of the best information collections to be found anywhere on this forum. Unlike a book, we can update and extend our guides at need.
You may find these guides here very helpful as they should answer most of your questions. The guides include housing, safe and unsafe enrichment, diet, care and extreme weather protections (guinea pigs need to be treated like tender plants); understanding behaviour and making friends with them (including a little course in 'piggy whispering'), learning what is normal and not, life-long health monitoring, how to spot illness early on, vet and emergency home care information, and links to our recommended and carefully vetted good welfare standard guinea pig rescues as well as recommended vets. The guides have been specifically for owners without experience. We have made them as practical and precise as the matter allows.
Here are the links to our information collections. You may want to bookmark the second link as it really makes a very helpful and also very interesting resource to browse, read and re-read at need. The experiences of nearly 15 years on a lively forum with a number of experienced long term owners and rescue fosterers have all gone into it.
Are Guinea Pigs For Me? - Wannabe Owners' Helpful Information
Getting Started - New Owners' Most Helpful Guides
Please consider keeping your piggies as indoor piggies all year round; they are a lot safer and you will get much more interaction with them. We have had so many owners whose piggies have never moved out again after the first winter...
I have a Ferplast Plaza 160 cm and I can fully recommend it. It’s a good solid cage, ideal if you have young children and other pets
The new C&C grid cages are much more flexible to adapt to individual space needs than traditional cages. You can find links to our members C&C cage gallery at top of our housing section. There is also a much wider choice of beddings available.
Don't go for pet shop toys; the best ones are brown cardboard boxes, paper bags or toilet roll inners with that you can serve their dinner or some soft hay in - turning feeding time into enrichment time also means that you are less tempted to overdo unhealthy treats.
The best rescues within your reach are Milhaven Guinea Pig Rescue in Keighley and Cavy Corner in Doncaster (Cavy Corner events - sadly none this year - are generally also an informal meet-up of our more Northern forum members for a good old old piggy chin wag).
Allow the rescue to recommend a bonded pair to you rather than going by looks; the greatest personalities are very often the less showy ones - but it is the personality that untimately carries the bond between you and your guina pigs. You want a pair that is suitable for new owners and ideally already used to a home and human interaction for an easier start. Don't be fussed about rehoming adults; they are advantages to that.
Guinea pig keeping has moved on a lot in the last decade if you are aiming for a good welfare standard. All our information on this forum is in keeping with or, more often than not, surpassing minimal welfare recommendations. You are of course always welcome to ask any questions you may have in our Care sections or if you and husband wish, join our friendly and lively community to chat about your piggies in the various Chat sections.
It is great that you are planning ahead and are doing your research. Please be aware that rescues are closed in the weeks over Christmas and the holiday to avoid impulse adoptions since a lot of their intakes are the result of not throught through impulse buys, so your 'Christmas surprise' cannot happen on the day itself - but I don't think that that really matters over the excitement and anticipation of getting pets. Perhaps instead of surprising your hub, you may want to involve him as the run up and all the discussions about homing, bedding etc. are actually rather part of the fun.
I hope that this helps you?