I feel your pain on weddings. When my wife and I were getting married, we pretty much paid for everything ourselves (>95%). It is frustrating to see how much a wedding costs. It seems like things get marked up just because it is a wedding. We were able to get most vendors to reduce their price just by saying that their price was a little high for our budget and asking if there was any room for them to come down. One of the best deals we got was on the photographer. My wife had her heart set on one photographer. They happened to already be booked the date of our wedding. However, he offered to connect us with one of his assistants. The assistant had a very similar style and did our wedding for less than half of the original photographer because he wanted to build his portfolio. If you put the time in, there is quite a bit of money that can be saved.
Link to some of my wedding photographs if anyone cares:
http://hughforte.com/journal/archives/856
