This thread has turned into a fun collection of wedding stories.
RalphTheMastiff, your place is so beautiful that I'm thinking you should start renting it out for weddings. That way you would raise money and get all the kinks out for your own wedding. A two-fer!
Here is what irked me when we planned our wedding: the minute you uttered the "W" word, a whole new price schematic would emerge from a vendor. For instance, we did a tremendous amount of due diligence when it came to dessert. It is, after all, the single most important part of a wedding, right? As such, we just
had to go to dozens of bakeries in search of the perfect cake/frosting combination. The first bakery we walked into we sidled up to the counter and started flipping through an album of decorated cake photos. Eventually an employee came over to ask if we needed help, and we explained we were looking at wedding cake options. She said, ohhhhh, well then, this is not the right book (closing and taking away the cake album we'd been looking at),
this is the book you need to look at. And inside were pictures of almost identically decorated cakes... with prices that were all 20-30% higher.
At any rate, like others here, our wedding was a small affair. Our parents accompanied us to the Daley Center in Chicago where we lived for many years (the city, not the Daley Center), we were married in a judge's chambers upstairs, then we had a 4-course dinner for 19 people in a private upstairs dining room at a wonderful restaurant. Our wedding invites were hand-painted by us, flowers were a few simple Gerbera daisies, my dress was just an off-the-rack white-ish cocktail/party dress, and we asked our guests to bring a camera if they had one and take lots of photos. Oh, and we ended up getting mini-cupcakes in lieu of a bigger cake.
RTM, I hope you and your fiancee are able to suss out a celebration that is befitting of you both. People may whisper behind your back about your choices, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter what they think. You will soon learn, if you haven't already, it only matters what your soon-to-be-wife thinks.
Oh, and whatever you do, do not mention the word wedding when getting a price quote on anything. Be vague, and say, oh, we're thinking of having a little party...