Religious wedding price

I'm thinking about getting married in 2-3 years but I started to look at prices. I'm Catholic and live in California, and so far the prices of the ceremony are around $1K-2K, depending on if you're registered or not and if your parents made a huge donation of about $2K-25K (which I think it's unfair). I was thinking about just doing the Catholic ceremony in Mexico because it'll be less than $300 but it's just too much work I rather do here... but why so expensive?! How much did you pay? I'm planning on saving $3K to get married but probably won't throw a party at all.