400k house estimated - became a 470k house / an experience report

You only get married once, so you should really make it count. And if you're thrifty, you can easily get by with 20-25k.

Wow. We got married with a close circle of family and friends, celebrated in our own garden, lovingly made the decorations ourselves, and my dress cost 82€. We had a nice, small celebration, everyone had fun and were well fed. We have beautiful photos and even more beautiful memories.
If I had had more money lying around, I might have done it bigger, but we didn’t want to go into debt for it. I would do it the same way again.

Consciously and individually deciding that a wedding should only cost €2000 instead of €20,000 has nothing to do with being factual.

Yes, of course. A €20,000 wedding is hardly something for the average person. Look at the data on Germans' savings. And you probably don't want to deny that a whole industry has built up around princess expectations and the "I buy, therefore I am" attitude, which did not exist 20 years ago.
Taking out a loan for a wedding...

life is too short! Later you regret the things you DID NOT do.

Who on their deathbed ever says: I wish I had invited 50 more colleagues to the wedding and used even more expensive table decorations? And two bands and a DJ would have been better..

No, people do that already beforehand. Not only at the deathbed... often directly after the euphoria is over. So possibly directly in the following week/month/years.

and now please back to the topic...

Wedding - House Wedding: is overrated, is NOT the most beautiful day in life, totally ridiculous, then I could just take a rope the next morning if it would never get better again. House: has a higher value HERE than e.g. in the USA where people move more often and more easily due to job changes, into possibly identical houses elsewhere, or their house builder puts the house on a low-loader and takes it with them - is that really still done that way? I already wrote how we proceeded. The biggest cost driver for us was sanitary (incl. controlled residential ventilation, heating and very expensive bathroom furniture). It could have been significantly cheaper - but we did not want or have to. When I look at how new buildings are generally constructed, I would classify this here as a good average. It is not easy, but it is not consistently upscale either. So electric shutters/blinds and the controlled residential ventilation probably count as upscale, the rest rather less...

modern commercial buildings are nowadays technically better equipped than 90% of single-family houses!

Commercial buildings, modern or not, are in any case regularly not owned by people who live in them and want to attach emotions to them.

life is too short! Later you regret the things you DID NOT do.

Exceptions prove the rule - also the exception that getting over-indebted is something one can absolutely choose not to do without remorse.

Who on their deathbed says: I should have invited 50 more colleagues to the wedding and chosen even more expensive table decorations? And two bands and a DJ would have been better..

I’ll add one more: just imagine lying on your deathbed and only being able to afford a lonely garage band for your funeral instead of at least a beatbox sextet.