This is what we did.
We originally had planned the whole white wedding thing and had booked a stately home/hotel that had a church on site. It would have been amazing. However, once the invoices started to roll in the total price was getting stupid. I got an invoice from the venue for £31k, that covered hire of the venue (church & marquee), wedding breakfast and evening buffet, evening disco, champagne reception and rooms at the hotel. We had 200+ guests and once you start looking at food it's easy to get to £100 a head and at almost every wedding there are people moaning about the food, and if I'd have heard this I would have chopped their heads off
That was also without anything such as rings, her dress, flowers for the venue, car hire, suit hire, photographer or honeymoon! It would have easily spiralled over £50k!!!
Then I had a falling out with some close family members who threatened to boycott my wedding. It suddenly dawned on me that I was going to spend over £50k to feed and room other people. It also concerned me that if anyone ruined my day (like not turning up, getting drunk, causing a scene etc) that I would have spent £50k to have it ruined by someone!
So we binned off all those plans, and instead of having 200+ guests, me and Laura, booked flights to Vegas for just me & her and spent about £6k on getting married there, staying in a suite at the MGM, helicopter rides over the strip and generally had an amazing time as we focused on what it was actually all about, me & Laura, and not feeding a load of people that we probably hadn't seen for years.
We then booked a marquee at a nice hotel in the UK the week after and spent about £10k on that and had a great time as there was no pressure etc.
Looking back I would be really annoyed with myself if I had spent £50k+ on a single day. I know we could have done it cheaper but it was either all or nothing for us and I'm glad we did it the way we did it now as we have only positive memories