Candlelight cast soft shadows along the walls as the young woman carefully pushed a lace veil from her face and surveyed the sumptuous scene. All around her, friends in diaphanous summer dresses laughed and sipped champagne as camera flashes burst intermittently around the room. With sweeping views of the New South Wales' Hunter Valley, ornate ceilings and a lavish four-course menu, it was the perfect setting for a wedding.

Except this was no wedding - it was a hen's party. Or, more correctly, just one moment in an extravagant hen's weekend that ended up costing each guest about $600. "It was originally planned for Fiji," one guest confided. "But in the end we held it here, though between the beauty treatments, meals out and accommodation, it still cost everyone hundreds. But that's the way hen's nights are now - they just seem to be getting bigger and bigger."

Speak to many bridesmaids and they'll agree, before recounting stories of expensive hen's parties involving luxury spa weekends, life drawing classes, themed nights out and wine tastings. An array of excessive satellite soirees - from pre-wedding dinners to post-wedding brunches - have also sprung up around nuptials. Traditional engagement parties and kitchen teas are also becoming more glittering affairs.

But it's not just wedding-related revelry. Today, everything from children's 1st birthdays to 30ths, baby showers, proposals, Valentine's Days and anniversaries are an excuse for some of us to super-size our party plans to a scale that dwarfs our everyday lives.

Take Susie for example. It's 2.51pm and she's just announced that she loves scrambled eggs on toast with Vegemite. If this sounds unremarkable, that's because it is. But it's also something the 27-year-old from Sydney has deemed interesting enough to post on her Facebook site for her 480 Facebook friends to see. They also have access to a staggering 56 online photo albums - containing more than 1000 images - she has posted.

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Susie is one of the 110 million people (including three million Australians) who belong to the social networking site. She logs on "pretty much everyday", she says. "Actually, every day... maybe three times. I find other people fascinating and I like to keep up with what everyone else is doing."

For Susie, like most Generation Exhibition Facebook users, this means checking out the hundreds of fresh photos her friends post every week - something that just wasn't possible 10 years ago. Facebook and digital cameras didn't exist back then - a development Huntley believes has a lot to do with Generation Exhibition's fixation with self-portrayal. "This is the first generation where everything has been captured on handicam or camera," she says. "Today we have the option to take, store and print hundreds of thousands of photos."

It's a rare party or dinner these days where at least one person doesn't whip out a camera and start snapping. Yet only some of these photos make it on to Facebook, continues Huntley, because Facebook pages are often carefully edited, aspirational versions of their owner's lives. "People definitely use Facebook to put forward an image or a story that makes them feel better about themselves," agrees Susie, who admits to doing this herself. "When I was in the UK I was having a shit time; I wasn't having fun at all. But you wouldn't have known that from my Facebook."