I'm re-awakening this thread because of a very odd wedding (well, bridal-shower) conversation I had this weekend. A colleague and I were both invited to our employee's shower, the invitation for which specified "no non-monetary gifts." This made me cringe, but I love my employee, and she's young, and maybe in her family/community (heavily Italian) that's not considered gauche.
Colleague and I compromised on $125 each (I wanted to give $100--well, I wanted to give $40, but, you know--and she wanted to give $150). We arrived to discover that the shower was quite fancy--slipcovers on the chairs, truly incredible quantity and variety of desserts, etc (though a buffet and held at a venue her relative works at, presumably with a good discount).
My colleague was then very upset that we had not given more. From my perspective, there's no reason that our gifts should be tagged to the "fanciness" of the event: we had no way of knowing, plus it's not really our responsibility to "cover" unnecessary frilliness costs, over and above what could have been and often is an event held in someone's living room.
So: for an event (shower, birthday, etc) that would be perfectly normal/acceptable in a living room or backyard with snacks and a cake instead of a full meal, servers, etc--would you give more because the frilliness factor has been turned up to 11? And what would you do, if anything, if you expected low-key and arrived to find Very Fancy?
(Not looking forward to having to give even more for the wedding--colleague is certainly going to insist on it now, since from her perspective I "won" the discussion about the shower gift amount.)