WOW! Holy cow Our wedding was considered 'extravagant' by some and we spent around $15-20K, with the reception totalling $10K at $105 per head (paid more to have it in March)

And I like the idea of wishing wells. No point getting a gift that the bride/groom may not like so much or already have something similar.
You paid extra for a March wedding? What was the reason they gave you? Ours was a March wedding at $59 per head! That was for a three course meal, the hire of the chapel, drinks and nibbles between the ceremony and reception, all drinks, plus chair covers too. This was for a lunch reception on a Sunday which meant we lost half an hour on what we would have had on a dinner reception. Dinner was $89 per head. Wasn't a hall or anything, it was at one of the nicest wedding venues here. We had 69 people all up and we fought hard to keep the list down (Italian background). We refused to have anyone there we didn't know and had no kids (from the age of three they were charged out as an adult).

I kinda like how this thread is now completely off topic because it's still really interesting!

Even though we had the honeymoon registry, we still received other gifts. And yes, we did cop nasty slack about asking people to give money essentially. Which is crazy because other weddings I'd been to , the same people who have us a hard time were happy to pin hundreds of dollars to the bride's dress because it was "custom".