I have a weird obsession with weddings.
Your options:
1. Think of it as a restaurant dinner party that happens to include a wedding. For $2k, take your closest friends/family to the courthouse, and then meet everybody else at a restaurant you booked. Have a nice dinner, booze--you can treat about 20-25 people. Can be secular or religious, but you're probably not gonna get a church out of this option. Slightly controversial depending on folks' expectations. Very normal for second marriages.
Don't waste a lot on wedding attire. There's lots of ways to get around this, my favorite of which is to skip a wedding dress and go with
www.renttherunway.com.
Never been to a wedding like this, but very nearly had one and extensively researched the options.
2. Poor as church mice church wedding. You've been going to this church for years and have a lot of people on your team for the wedding. You invite a ton of people, the church is free, as is the pastor, the choir, and the organist, and you have the reception in the basement (no booze). The reception features lots of Costco food heated up and served by volunteers who love you. The church secretary makes the cake. You wear your mother's dress, or luck out with a $100 dress made in China that you found on Ebay. Get your makeup done at Macy's the morning of the wedding.
I've gone a
lot of these, and I find them charming. My own wedding was kind of like this, but a little fancier (our budget was $10k). Only works if you have the right community. Not to mention a church you've gone to for years.
3. Secular backyard potluck wedding. You're gonna need a backyard and a nice, can-do community who likes to cook. You're also gonna need low expectations and you're really gonna need to get the fuck off Pinterest because that shit gets expensive and soul-numbing.
4. Destination wedding elopement. To a low-key, non-international destination.
Honestly, for $2k on a first marriage wedding, you're gonna have to have a bride and groom who have a very strong understanding of who they are, because in most families there is going to be some serious pushback. It can be done, but depending on your circumstances it's going to require a strong constitution. A wedding with the bare minimum of wedding expectations is going to run you around $8k-$15k, depending on how much help your community wants to give you.
BTW, yeah, um, you don't throw a party expecting a gift from your guests. I've read every wedding etiquette book known to man, plus all the wedding websites (I second the recommendation for
www.apracticalwedding.com; do not, I repeat, do not allow your fiancee on
www.stylemepretty.com). You throw the party as a party for your friends/family to celebrate the creation of a new marriage. Gifts are a bonus, not a requirement. You write thank you notes for them ASAP. Plenty of people will say times have changed, but trust me on this: it's easier to just throw the party with no expectations of gifts, and it's easier to just write the damn thank you notes.