I was amazed at how much more money people spent on things like a baby shower. My wife was teaching at a high school while I was in grad school and we had our first baby while we were there. The teachers had a baby shower for my wife and they all bought her these really nice, expensive gifts. Here in Utah, she would have maybe got nice gifts, but they would have been from 3-5 people going in on the gift together, compared to each person buying nice gifts by themselves out there. I don't know if it is necessarily a Mormon thing or if its just a Utah thing, but we are kind of "frugal" here.