>In New Zealand, "tent" and "marquee" are interchangeable. However, a marquee can also be, as you suggest, a large awning. In fact, I've also seen marquee used to describe an extremely permanent type of shop verandah over the front door of a picture (movie) theatre

Here, a tent tends to be the kind of thing one goes camping in, so the Wedding companies like to hire Marquees to make it sound grander, also in use at summer sporting events, in the years when we have summers. Marquees can be very grand but the main difference between the USA & UK (not sure about NZ?) is that weddings, until recently, have only been able to take place in a church or in a Registery Office, so the concept of getting married in one's parents' house has seemed rather strange until now. I always think a wedding reception in a marquee is a bit of a special event as only fairly rich families can a) afford them or b) have gardens big enough to cope. I'm not sure that they'd be too pleased if their expensive marquee was called a "tent". "Four Weddings and a Funeral" gives a fair range of "better off" weddings.

I'd tend to call the kind of thing that is attatched to the side of the house (or often, caravan) an awning. I think the ones on the side of shops are also called awnings but I'm sure that someone is trying to make more up-market ones called Marquees.

By the way I think up-market isn't used as a term in the USA - I saw someone use up-scale which may mean the same thing.