I missed this somehow...
Congrats, first of all.
We did a very low key wedding, and our friends are still raving about how much fun it was.
The one thing that is a good splurge is a photographer. I wish we had a better one, but what do you do. We had the meal catered, but made all the desserts for the dessert bar ourselves. My mom and I had a marathon baking day, and the mom-in-law pitched in too. CostCo has really good prices on trays of meat, cheese, desserts, etc.
My dress was fairly inexpensive and we rented the guys suits. We had our wedding and the reception in the same place, and it was a little town hall in a TINY town right by ours. I think we paid $300 for the whole rental? If you can, get family and friends to do as much as possible. Think: bartenders, servers, dj, and so on.
And you can absolutely make the bouquets and stuff yourself. Watch for those 40% off coupons for Michaels and go nuts!!
Have fun!!!