Can anyone provide assistance with English wedding customs?

I'm an American woman (in the US currently) marrying an Englishman (in the UK). We've just gotten engaged and are in the beginning stages of planning our wedding. However, I really need some help.

I am pretty familair with American weddings, but he's never been to any weddings at all, and his family has never really had large celebrations, so he isn't a really great source of information as to how UK and US weddings differ. I am up to my eyeballs in different internet resources, but everything says something different. The reception venues I am looking at are all mentioning something called a wedding breakfast in addition to an evening reception, or maybe it's in place of-- am I supposed to amuse my guests for an entire day and three full meals? How do I pick if it's an either-or situation? What the hell is a Toastmaster? What if we don't want toasts? Gah!

This is the bare basics of what I am familiar with in US weddings: wedding ceremony at some point between 11 am and 3 pm, with a 4 or 5 hour reception following, involving only one meal (sit-down or buffet), cake, dancing.

What is the difference in the UK? What quirks are there? What do I absolutely have to have that its' absence would be strange?

Additional details if needed: We aren't looking at having an enormous 300 person blowout, it'll be small and fairly intimate (maybe 50 people). Interested in ceremony in his village church and then elsewhere for reception. We're fairly, er, mature (I'm 30, he's 40) and we both have children, I've been married before but he hasn't, I don't know if any of this matters.. help!