The best recommendation would be to really double-, triple- check your scene and make some conclusions about what is actually important and what could be changed to get you up and rendering.  High settings do not necessarily mean great quality.  You might be taking a hit in shadow quality, resolution, etc.

Do you characters, objects, props which are just background fillers that could be downgraded to low-poly or lo-res textures?  Are there too many lights?  Are you using raytracing as opposed to Depth Shadow Mapping?  Are there objects not in the scene that can be eliminated?  Hiding back-facing poly's?  Unchecking raytracing and casting shadows for hair?  Have you considered rendering in passes?  Render foreground, midground and background passes and assemble everything in a 3rd party program that can handle layers. 

There are many options that you can take if you think it through and make changes which will not take away from you final scene but give you the quality render you are after.