I'm going to completely disagree here, but then again I'm weird. I allowed my wedding to be my mother's thing...since I'm an only daughter. My parents set a budget, and then my mother reset the budget to quite a shitload more. It's far more than honestly I think should be spent on something like that, but there were very very few things that were important to me regarding the ceremony, and it was something I believed was very important to her. The only thing I drove her nuts with was my general apathy on most things.
But what WAS important was the guest list. We had a huuuuge amount of people, and given the extent of the crap my mom was doing each guest was pretty expensive. But she was flexible there in that I wasn't going to have a situation of not having someone there important to me, or my spouse. And we had a ton of family come.
I didn't care what people bought me or how much shit was purchased on the registry. In two cases, I tore up checks that people gave us. In one case it was a cousin I was VERY close to as a child, and we found that bound between us existed now we were adults even though we hadn't seen each other as much as we'd wanted over the years. He and his wife came out, had to make arrangements for their kids and had just bought a home. Buying the tickets and paying for a hotel stretched them to the limit...but he really wanted to give me a gift. I talked with his wife about it and told her to tell him I tore it up and why (and she thanked me profusely). Their 'gift' to me was simply being there, and it really was. The other case was one of my best friends who was in my wedding party. I picked a dress which was nice (they all liked it) under $125 dollars, and could be used again (wasn't ridiculous). But the money for that and other shit stretched her budget. She didn't have a lot of money, and yet on top of it tried to give me money as a wedding gift. Sooo not necessary.
Anyway, for me my wedding wasn't a way to finance my new life. I had bought my home before I married anyway. It wasn't a way to wring cash out of friends and family. It was a celebration, and I'd much rather have someone 'regift' some stupid ass company wine bucket than not attend due to financial reasons.
YMMV.