You might be surprised, but it happens pretty regularly. Sure, there are some parts of American culture where you're expected to throw a huge fancy ceremony with a $15,000 dress and a limo and a 7-course meal. But there are parts of American culture where the expected wedding reception is cake and punch, buying a dress on clearance is a mark of pride, and you either drive your own car or borrow a friend's car if yours is well below median crapitude.
Our total wedding expenses weren't quite that low -- 200+ people came in at around $4k, including brunch (it was a mid-morning wedding,) a dress hand-made by the mother of the bride, and rental of a horse-drawn Amish buggy from the farmer next door to the church.
Of course, both "lots of people at the wedding" and "spend little money" signify something -- lots of people signifies a lot of social support, and friends and family who think this is a good idea; spending little money is an indicator that the important part is the life you're making together, without too much emphasis on the initial celebration. (I have read studies to this effect, though it's been a long time and I couldn't now tell you where they were published.)
This is kinda funny. Our reception back home (the wedding itself was an extremely intimate thing with only a dozen attendees partly because it was a destination wedding), had well over 300 people, but I think our costs were only about $2,000 for the whole thing, which included the destination ceremony and plane tickets.
My wife and I have close ties to our community, and lots of close friends, and my wife's family is large and tightly knit.
Anyway, a big reason our costs ended up so low was because of the size of the wedding. People donated food, services, time, equipment and everything else. If we simply paid for it all, it probably would have cost closer to an average American wedding.
With gifts, we ended up making money on the wedding. Not much, but enough to start our younger selves off nicely.
That would have been brilliant. Just reached the ten year mark on marriage. Our wedding involved a JP and a local park. Food involved some grilling and various sides we made ourselves. We asked for no presents (donations to charity in our names if they insisted). We had a great time prepping everything, but a pot luck...
