This sounds just like my story! I was a couple years older when we married last year, but had a lot of the same feelings. I have pretty bad social anxiety, so the idea of a "normal" wedding really freaked me out. Also, the idea of spending all that money just seemed ridiculous. I come from a poor family and had a lot of student debt going into the marriage, so we really didn't have a big budget.

I was all for eloping, but my fiance felt too guilty about doing it. I was so upset for so long that I was being denied the ability to elope... but honestly, I'm glad we didn't. I know I would have felt guilty too. We ended up having a very small wedding. There were maybe 40 guests there, it was held earlier than most (around 1pm) and was very informal. Here is some of what we did:

Wedding was held in my parent's backyard, so no venue rental fees. My dad built an arbor type thing to have the ceremony under. We rented chairs, tables, and a tent. We only had around 40 guests, so all of this costed maybe under $1000. My parents offered to pay for the rentals.

Food was catered & buffet style. I had every intention of cooking everything ourselves, but my (now) father in law generously offered to ease the stress of cooking and paid for that.

Our bridal party consisted of my two sisters and his two brothers. They just wore suits and we bought them matching ties. My sisters wore matching dresses (under $50). There wasn't a maid of honor or best man.

I ordered my dress from Davids Bridal (online) cost $150. It was a shorter dress. Shoes were around $50. I did not have a veil or anything like that. I did splurge and get my hair & makeup done, which was a bit pricey.. but the convenience was well worth it. I did skip the trial run though, which saved me a lot of money. And I think it still came out looking how I expected.

We had to pay for an officiant to come marry us (we aren't religious). We had a simple ceremony that we personalized a bit, followed by food. The wedding was pretty early, so this cut down on costs, as most people wouldn't be doing much eating and drinking so early. The only alcohol we had was bottled beer and champagne for the toast. There was no dancing, we just had an iPod set up with music that we picked out. My sister made our wedding cake, so that was free for us. We DIYed our wedding favors, so those were pretty cheap as well.

Everything turned out great. We made sure our guests knew ahead of time that this wasn't going to be a formal event. Everything went as expected and as much as I originally wanted to elope... it was nice to make our families happy. It's definitely possible to have a wedding and not spend a ton of money. There are definitely things we could have done to cut down costs further, but we were lucky to have family that chipped in with things.

Good luck with everything!