I'm also no expert, but this is what I'd suggest. By all means chip in with corrections/comments.

I'd also check the macro mode and how close you can focus, and also how easy it is to manually focus the camera (assuming we're talking about "bridge" cameras, i.e. high-end point and shoot with a single non-changeable lens) to make sure you get the right thing in focus.

The f-stop the camera can shoot at will determine how easily you can create "out of focus" backgrounds (smaller the better f stop setting - this also varies with lens zoom), though you'd probably need to either try for yourself or see some example images (which perhaps people could provide with example cameras - I'll do something this afternoon with my Finepix HS20 if it's of interest)

Being able to shoot raw might be of interest, if you want to do lots of manipulation after the fact, though I imagine that JPEGs will be fine for most people (me included so far).

Not a biggie, but can the camera be triggered remotely to avoid camera shake if you're shooting a low light scene?

Last but not least, if you decide to go with external flashes (or think you might one day - see the recent thread on them), does the camera have a hot shoe or a PC sync (I know nothing about the latter), with which you can attach either a physical flash (via a cable if necessary) or an RF trigger to trigger unconnected flash units.