I've been to well over a hundred of parties, and have yet to see a gift opened, which is fine by me, since my kids tend to give a $20 Target gc - I always have them on hand!
Around here, it's the norm to open gifts at the party. And gift cards are common. Target,
Walmart, Amex, iTunes, Justice, etc. The kids are every bit as excited about the gift cards as the "real" presents. They squeal with delight, because they know they can go out and buy exactly what they want.


Just this weekend, we gave an iTunes card to a friend of DD's because we knew she had an iPod. She got it 2 years ago when her parents made her save up b-day and Christmas money to buy her own. She was thrilled.
We usually spend $20-25 for a gift. If I had to split that 2 ways on a kid we knew and the stranger kid, then the kid we knew wouldn't get nearly as nice a gift as they normally would have. On the other hand, DD was invited to a twin party recently, but she knew both twins. We spent twice the money for that reason. If you're invited to a joint party and you do not know the second kid, ideally you should not even be aware it's a joint party since the invitation should
only have the name of the child you DO know and not have the name of the child you do NOT know. In that case, you'd show up with one gift just as you normally would for a non-joint party.
This is obviously a cheapskate effort by the party moms which is doubling as a major gift grab. I can understand frugality, but greediness is unforgivable.
