After the back and forth here, I just took a look at the article;
we split almost all costs, but since our mechutanim are not well-off, we splurged in the areas where we wanted more. My son wanted great music, for example, so we upgraded without asking the other side to chip in. We also spent extra on the smorgasbord and dessert
Can very well be that they split the basics. Splurging on music bands, smorgaboards, aufruf, dresses etc. on their end can easily add additional $30k-$40k.