Your Thoughts on this, please

Thinking about it, if someone announced to me after I accepted the invitation that the menu was changed, and going to be lobster and steak, I'd go, since I accepted the invitation, but would probably eat before I went.

I wouldn't eat the lobster (yuck) and the steak probably wouldn't appeal to me. Therefore, the idea that I'd be paying for things I don't even like/won't eat would be irksome.

If I thought I was invited to a dinner party for 4, and it was suddenly 20, I'd bow out. I'd be doubly/triply pissed off that the change was announced so close to the event.

That the event turned into a $25 meal without asking would be on the wrong side of the last straw.

I may particularly sensitive to this as I've paid for an event on Saturday that was supposed to be 6 or 8 people and has now turned into 20 or more. I'm not interested in those other people, don't have any interest in spending any time with them. My conundrum is whether or not I want to tell the original group I'm not going to show up - I'm not interested in having a discussion about why I don't want to go now or any efforts to persuade me to attend. I'm planning to consider what I've paid a donation to their event.

Jesus, this reminds me of something that happened to me years ago.

I went to a friends house, where she'd invited 4 other gals over to watch movies and eat pizza, so 6 of us.
Pizza arrives, cost with tip let's say was $30 for 3 pizzas so should be simple enough to figure out 5 bucks apiece.

I remember tossing my $5 in, and tried to concentrate, unsuccessfully on the movie, while there was all this discussion, wheeling and dealing, and general confusion over who should pay how much. It went on forever, like 20-30 minutes, while the movie was going along.
Finally, giving up on watching the movie, I finally paid attention to this financial conundrum, and saw that for some ******* reason, there was only some odd number like $21.00 in the pile, and no one could figure out, or own up to the fact that 6 x 5 = 30.

By this time, the pizza was gone, I'd gotten 1 lousy slice out of it (it was really nasty pizza too), and by the mere fact that I was the only one that hadn't engaged in this complicated conversation, I was getting the fish eye.

Long story, realizing this was going to go on the rest of the night, I threw another $10 into the pile. So I got one slice for $15, was still hungry, but everyone finally shut up about it.

Then the conversation started again with "What's going on in the movie, I didn't see any of it"

Someone was negligent in choice of pizzerias.