As the holiday shopping season and mad scramble to find the perfect present begins, Neil Romain already knows what he is buying for his wife of 15 years: a gift certificate.

Lest you peg his selection as unimaginative, this particular gift certificate is for a $300 appointment with a cosmetic surgeon to blast away her varicose veins.

With gift cards and certificates booming for all manner of retailers - experts say they top most holiday wish lists - perhaps it was inevitable that they would eventually venture into treacherous territory. These days, you can get gift certificates for such delicate areas of personal development as plastic surgery, marriage counseling and anger management classes.

But etiquette experts and even purveyors of these new better-yourself certificates warn that such gifts could be interpreted by the beneficiary as less giving and more intervention.

"Before you buy, I say use your best judgment," says Peggy Post, an etiquette expert and great-granddaughter-in-law of Emily Post. "Stop and think first. Could this backfire?" Search and you will find a gift certificate for almost anything, ranging from liposuction and hair loss treatments to online dating services and sex therapy workshops.

"We live in a country where many people have pretty much everything they want," says etiquette expert Jacqueline Whitmore. "It's getting harder and harder to find gifts that they don't already have, so people put a lot of energy into finding that one-of-a-kind, personal and creative gift. I think we'll be seeing a lot more personalized gifts like these in the future.

"The giver has to be really careful about giving a gift that might imply something or offend somebody," says Whitmore, who founded the Protocol School of Palm Beach in Florida.

Companies like eHarmony and Yahoo! are encouraging matchmakers to rescue their friends and family from the affliction of singlehood. Yahoo! Personals is launching its new gift program next month ($19.95 per month-long subscription, $44.95 for three months or a generous $99.95 per year for those slower at coupling), and eHarmony's has been going strong for more than a year now.

For Post, the etiquette expert, these gifts fall into the increasingly intrusive realm, along with everything else that is "TMI" and "OTL" - too much information and over-the-line.

"No one should be surprised that such gifts are given," Post says. "We've gotten so informal as a society that people don't think twice about asking questions that are too nosy or baring things that are too personal. These gift certificates are an outgrowth of that."

"There is a very fundamental flaw in society in the last 30 to 40 or 50 years, in that people have no boundaries anymore," Fernandopulle says. "Good intentions are nice, but not good enough. There must be other thinking involved when giving such a gift. Both parties must have permission and give permission. This is not a good surprise gift."

He concedes that he would not have attempted such a delicate gift as a newlywed. Even after 15 years together, Romain spent weeks reading up on various treatments available for varicose veins and discussing the procedure with Matt Leavitt, founder of Advanced Dermatology and Cosmetic Surgery in Florida, who sold him the gift certificate.

"I did a lot of research and decided that ‘Hey honey, here's a check for 300 bucks. Go at it, baby,' wasn't the way to go," says the 39-year-old Orlando, Fla., advertising salesman. "Instead, I'm going to put the gift certificate and a photo advertisement of someone else's legs in a nice, big box.

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