Matt, I'm working on a thorough answer on this because long term things should be Featured & Nominated not Featured or Nominated. But I want to be honest about how much additional feedback (if any) comes from Featuring on top of an accepted Boost.

Right now the specific reason we are saying to Nominate first, then Feature, is because of a race condition where the nomination form won't accept something that has already been boosted. So if you reverse the order you run the (small) risk that this will happen. But we are expecting that you would essentially do these sequentially with just a few seconds between them.