We had a moderate 15k-20k wedding and I don't regret it. It is amazing though how quickly expenses accumulate. We didn't care much about appearances or tradition, so we opted for more cost effective choices when possible, but it's hard to get around some of the expenses.
I think the big ones were 5k for the facility, which was a B&B that included rooms for nearly all of our 100-ish guests (they had to pay for their lodging beyond the 5k though). The 5k bought exclusive use, plus the support of their staff (including a full-time wedding 'planner') and the use of all of their wedding stuff, like tables, chairs, candles, decorations, outdoor heaters, etc. Not necessarily a great bargain, but having a full B&B that all of our guests could stay at together was great.
We went with a buffet style catering from a local restaurant. I think it was a couple thousand, a bit less than $20 per plate. Not horrible, but certainly not cheap compared to what you can get if you just bake a whole lot of food yourself. The price included servers for the dinner which helped.
My wife did end up buying a fancier dress. I would have been fine with anything, but that ended up being important to her.
We hired a photographer for $1k which turned out to be somewhat of a disappointment. We did our own music and made playlists on our iPod. We paid a friend at cost to bake cupcakes for everyone instead of having a fancy cake. I think we even did our own flower arrangements. Also, each of our parents chipped in a couple thousand as a gift, which was very generous.
Regardless, this was the only time in my life where my extended family on both sides plus all my best friends from high school through grad school all came together in one place. It was wonderful and I'm glad we did it.