Have your wedding later in the evening and serve desserts only instead of a full dinner. It is no longer a "must" to serve a full meal as long as your ceremony and reception are late enough for the guests to eat before they arrive. For our backyard wedding, we had a "dessert buffet" that looked very classy but was only a fifth of the cost of serving full meals, plus it left us more time to have fun with our guests!
This page has wedding stategies and ideas for feeding big parties. Most of these ideas are either inexpensive or have inexpensive alternatives. Worth a look if you are planning on self-catering a wedding or large event.
