Figuring It All Out...

Last night, my FH and I finally sat down with some wedding planning and budgeting sheets and starting working out our best estimate for what our wedding is going to cost. When we got engaged in April, I set an amount I didn't want to go over, but it was quickly obvious that it was fairly unreasonable, so we went up from that amount. Now in sitting down and looking over everything, it is pretty clear our budget should be nearly double what I was expecting. We are paying for the wedding ourselves, and while we can certainly afford it, I'm wondering if we *should* afford it. We can't really find anywhere that we can make appreciable cutbacks to save money. A few hundred dollars here or there, but not the amount that I would have really wanted to pay.

We have discussed what's important to us in this wedding--for me it's the photography, invitations, and flowers, for him it's the music.

This is my second wedding, and I guess I'm having sticker shock compared to my first, which was admittedly 17 years ago. I don't want my FH to feel cheated out of his dream wedding (I would personally be fine eloping to Las Vegas and telling everyone when it's over), and he is so sweet and romantic and he really wants this. He does view me as the expert and kind of defers to my judgment (so long as we don't elope--hahaha). Should I just put the money into it and go for it?