Ways to Spend Money Other Than on a Wedding

I was watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding on TV today with my girlfriend.  We have often talked about what we will eventually do when we get married.  None of the ideas involve having any sort of big standard wedding that we so often go to and that was depicted in the movie.  The money for the wedding will definitely be coming out of our own pockets, since neither of our families has the money for a big wedding anyway, and neither of us think the expense matches what you get out of it.

Instead, we will find some other way to spend the money.  The average cost of a wedding in the United States is around $30,000.  That's a lot of money.  When you factor in that a lot of people probably spend close to $0 on their wedding, what the heck are all the other people spending?  Weddings get expensive.  Weddings are stressful.  Weddings are hectic.  Weddings are not about the Bride and the Groom.  So to avoid all of that, we will probably take off and get married in Italy and start on our honeymoon.  So what will we do with the money?  Some ideas

• Spend more on the Honeymoon than we probably would have otherwise.  We will probably go longer, see more, and stay at nicer places than if we spent the money on the wedding


• Put it towards the house (if we don't already have one)


• Have a kick ass party for our friends when we get back

Any other ideas?