For her second wedding, my sister had a fairly big wedding. She was also part of a two career couple and had lived a long time in the same state. She knew a lot of people.

In contrast, I have moved a lot as an adult and nearly 6 years of homelessness taught me that poverty is very hard on your social life. I would have trouble coming up with, say, six people to invite to a hypothetical second wedding for me. I just do not have a big social network of that sort.

Congrats on getting a wedding for very little money. But I strongly suspect that knowing 200 people well enough to even invite them to your wedding makes you more upper class than you likely realize.

I eloped at age 19. Including rings (bought on sale), dinner and a movie, marriage license, blood testing and cab fair, it was under $300. So you sound like you did amazingly well.

Your testimony doesn't change my opinion that a mock cake for 160 guests is a rather upper class first world problem.