I'm going to New York next weekend for the New Yorker Festival and to party like a rock star with my four best friends from college. Some eating, drinking, shopping, dancing, and seeing lectures on casualties in Iraq and other fun stuff.

The five of us are really different, with different life situations and priorities. Financially, it's going to be a little like that Friends episode where the three of them were flush and happy to just split the bill evenly at the end of a restaurant meal, whereas the other three ordered on the cheap side specifically so their bill was going to be manageable (meaning, they wanted to pay specifically for what they had eaten).

What's the etiquette of that? How do you handle splitting the bill? Let's say I want to order a snazzy bottle of wine--I want to share it with my friends, but I don't want them to feel weird about not paying for it. Is it OK to sneak away and slide a credit card in your waiter's apron, or does that read as slimy and underhanded somehow?

I hate being all legaleese about who ordered what, adding their percentage of the tip, etc. Takes some of the fun out of dining out. But is it more annoying to those people who ordered inexpensively to pay for more than their share?