My friend with the titanium cheek and eye socket might disagree - flat ground, noob, had the same opinion about cheep (polycarb) helmets, lost it on a YZ125 in 3rd gear I think (~35mph I suppose). Bounced along the trail, broke his eyesocket and cheek bone on the inside of the helmet. Far from a scientific test, but the crash sure wasn't anything spectacular or high speed.
For fun I took a HJC polycarb helmet that came with a bike I bought and a retired fox pilot (the origional italian one, not the current korean ones). Droped them both from the same height and watched for a bounce. The HJC bounced like a rubber ball while the fox made a thud and more or less stuck to the ground. Next I tried throwing them at the ground hard, the HJC bounced up way over my head, the pilot bounced up about knee height.
Of course the only real conclusion is that the polycarb helmet bounces a lot higher than the composite (carbon/fibreglass/armidea). I'm know physics master, but I think that its bad for a helment to bounce.
Historically all the cheep lids were polycarb and expensive ones composite. Now days you can get some pretty decent near arai rip-off composit helmets for cheep. Like a M2R Team X for example - can be had for under a hundred bucks on sale and uses a dot/snell carbon fiber/fiberglass shell and doesn't weight much more than an arai of the same size (my wife has one, I have arai and vemar dirt helmets, the M2R is probably about the same as the Vemar in construction fit and finish).
My wife picked boots the same way as you, only the ones she liked best happend to be Sidi Force Flex SRS (about the most expensive moto boot you could get at the time - 355msrp):banghead I did the same and ended up with Tech-8's in 2000. Before that I had some fox forma's that I really liked. Didn't like the new forma nearly as much and went with the t-8 which was actually very simialr to the old forma....
Anyway, just my 2c be safe and have fun:thumbup