Barnak,
solid idea for you that we used because of the same problem. the only question is how old are you and your friends...???
we are all over 21 so it's a moot point.
we had a poker tournament hosted at a local social hall that we knew the owner of and he lent it to us free of charge. we then advertised like crazy mainly by word of mouth, which is cheap. ended up having a $50 buy-in texas hold 'em tourney that gave the house (us) about $600 and the winner netter another 600 with the runner up 100 and 3rd place their money back (we had just under 30 people show up). then, for the early losers we had cash games at two different tables for pot limit hold 'em games with the winner of each pot putting in anywhere between $1 for small pots and $3 for larger pots. that got us another 200 bucks and we ended up with around 800.
let me know what you think and if it works out or not.
voda