My wife and I paid for everything ourselves, and did it under $5,000. We were engaged for about a year, and all along the way, people offered to help. Brother-in-law owned a restaurant and gave us beer for the reception. Uncle had a ice cream parlor and got us soft drinks. Grandmother wanted to do flowers, so we just let her roll with it. Wife's aunt wanted to do hair and made the gals a breakfast. Her dress was off the clearance rack for $100 and she had modifications/alterations done and it was beautiful. We put up a monster tent on their farm for the reception. So on and so on...In about a year all the pieces fell into place. People would offer to do something, and we'd just let them. It made for a great day....
I've been to weddings where most of the guests were from Daddy's office and Mommy's sewing circle and they flat out sucked. The B&G were nothing but stressed the entire time like it was a [bleep] presidential gala. "oh we have to go shake hands with this person...blah, blah"
My feeling is that if you have to introduce your wife to a new face on your wedding day, they prolly shouldn't have been on the guest list to begin with..
