In my parent's community there are two important parties that cannot be ignored, 16th birthdays and graduation.
I'm a fairly low-key person, some of my cousins and family friends had really extravagant 16th birthdays with at least 100 people. I tried to get mine as modest as possible, but it still ended up being a fairly intensive affair. We rented a section of a restaurant and I found out just how hard it is to limit numbers without offending (re, pissing off) people. My mom did what she could, but my dad being my dad invited like 10 people the day of, so the section was fairly packed.
Thankfully for me, my graduation party was a few months before my sister's wedding, so it wasn't hard to convince them to keep it simple. We rented a tent for our driveway and my mom asked a bunch of her friends to make food, and we had food catered by a local Indian restaurant, I love fresh garlic naan.
If and when I get married, I truly hope to elope or do something simple but awesome like a backyard wedding. Now that I'm older, I really don't care as much about pissing off my parents' friends. They really don't give a shit about me, they just want to come because their friends are coming.