[dap]

I think this is easier said than done. You can certainly save enormously by skipping a lot of the traditional stuff (nice meal, music, cake, attire, photographer, etc.) altogether. But there's a reason those things are popular. A nice meal, music, and dancing make a great way to include multiple generations (toddlers to elderly) and people who don't necessarily know each other well (and don't share interests) but are nonetheless important to you. Throw in a photographer because these events are often a treasured (and rare) source of extended family photos and you've accounted for most of the cost of my own wedding, which was about average.

We looked for options to save by having a 20% "less nice" meal or a 40% "less good" photographer, but broadly speaking, those aren't really levers that we found. I guess you could try to lie to vendors and tell them that the music is for a retirement party and that they're going to be photographing a family reunion and hope they charge you less? I'm not sure the extra cost is as unreasonable as it sounds though. We were far from trying to "get every detail right", but we did want the stuff we paid for to show up. Just "showing up" with high probability is a substantially higher level of service than I get from most contractors/vendors/etc. that I've worked with more broadly in my life and I'm not surprised it would cost something.