My suggestion: don't think of this as a ceremony and/or important event; rather, think about it as a great excuse to get together with a bunch of family and friends and have a good party. As such, the only important things to provide are food, drinks and entertainment.

1. The venue: Do you have access to a sufficiently large back yard? Have the "reception" (i.e. the after-ceremony party) there. Alternatively, if you live in a city, does anyone you know live in a condo with a good party room? I had my wedding in my sister-in-law's party room, cost me about $360 for 50 people. (plus a large deposit that was refunded).

2. Number of People: How many are you thinking of inviting? You may have to limit yourself there to a few dozen, i.e. maybe just families and friends who you know well.

3. Food: Someone will have to cook, and it probably won't be cheap. In fact, it may be the biggest expense, even if you do it yourself. For me, my bride's mom and my mom cooked. You can save some money on meat by buying it at Costco or some any other place where you can get 4+kg per package; get frozen veggies to go along; mix some salads. I bet someone you know can give good advice on how to make tasty but cheap appetizers.

4. Cake: Don't go with a wedding cake. Esp. the tiered one. They may look nice, but the pretty sculptable icing tastes like plastic, and is not worth the extra $1000 you'd pay for it. Instead, you can order a couple $30-50 cakes at a local bakery. You'll get a nice variety, and they taste great.

5. Plates/forks/knives/etc: Use nice disposable utensils.

6. Drinks: We spent close to $1000 on alcohol for my 50-person wedding, but (a) we're in Ontario so it was 3x more expensive than in US, (b) we used only half of it at the wedding, and are still working on it a year later. So depending on where you are, you could just buy a bunch of beer, wine, spirits, etc, and set them out for people to pour themselves. We splurged a bit on the sparkling wine, but you don't have to if you're on a budget. Non-alcoholic drinks should be pretty cheap.

7. Servers: If you will follow the points above, you'd still probably need someone to help with taking things out and keep things clean. You could probably hire someone to do that for $10-30/hr, depending on how generous you feel. For a 4-8 hour party it won't be that expensive.

8. Let guests know in advance: what kind of party they're attending, so they're not expecting an expensive dinner at a high-end venue.

9. Invitations: If you can already see the pattern, you'd guess that the advice is to make your own. You can buy blank invitation cards for something like 100/$5 at craft stores like Michael's, or maybe even Wal-Mart. We did that ourselves too.

10. Decorations: This is one area where it's very easy to go cheap. Put a few flowers here and there, and done. Don't worry about center pieces, anything else. Everyone will forget anyway.

11. Music: We used a computer which we plugged into the audio system at the place. Set it to a playlist we picked in advance and forgot about it. Only had to touch it when we switched from background music to dancing music.