wanna go to a wedding?

In India people invite everyone they know, and I do mean everyone, to their wedding. Our accountant just got married and he emailed around to everyone in the office a copy of their wedding invitation inviting us all. Another guy in our office emailed around an invitation to his sisters' wedding to everyone in the office.
Apparently a 'small' Indian wedding has 500 people; one of the guys in my office was going to get married and was expecting 3,000 people. 3,000 people - could you imagine! Pretty much you invite everyone you know and then your family invites anyone they know. I bet it would be pretty easy to be a wedding crasher here. It isn't like people check for invitations.
Although I have heard that the wedding thing has kind of gotten a bit out of hand, especially in the middle class, where weddings have become an opportunity to show off your wealth to everyone; people take out loans and mortgages to pay for them. I suppose people do that in the US too, but in the US no one would think much if you decided to have a small wedding, so it is really up to you how much you want to spend whereas here I think that a small wedding is not an option; or if you did have a small wedding it might be considered an insult somehow.
I wonder if it would be insulting to someone if you are invited to a wedding and don't go. So far I've been invited to two; neither of which I particularly wanted to go to and luckily I was out of town for both so couldn't go. Of course people also invite you about 1 week before the wedding so maybe they are hoping people don't show up.
I find it interesting how different weddings are here versus in the states. I mean there you have seating plans and count the exact number of people, here is kind of a free-for-all. It must be nice to have things be so relaxed but at the same time you don't have much control over the wedding; whereas in the US people may stress over seating plans but you can make a wedding your own. It would be nice to go to an Indian wedding before I leave but I would have to buy a sari if I did go and they are expensive! We'll see. I suppose I could just crash one, although I do stand out just a little bit so I might get noticed and then thrown out and that would be quite unfortunate.