My wedding was the wife and me on holiday at Lake Tahoe, no witnesses, no guests, no party.
I can't even recall what we had for diner afterwards.

We didn't want the atmosphere of a wedding party where all your time is spent for other people, and we didn't want spend the kind of money normally associated with weddings. We were saving up for getting a mortgage so that we could get a lower interest rate, and a wedding party was not good for that. We did have diner with our parents when we got home, as they didn't know we were getting married and they had never met before.

Still going stronger than ever after 14 years of marriage.
I have the impresison that the more importance is put on the wedding, the higher the chances that the actual marriage will fail.