200 custom symbols in .bmp format, suggestions for having .mxd run faster

So I have one I've been stuck on for a couple of days. I work for a local city gvmt and am finishing up our sign map. We have about 200 signs in the city that we have shot and added all our data with GPS and the reflectometer. Anyways, where I'm getting stuck is that for most of these we needed to create custom symbols for 90% of our signs. We saw a map at some demo where each sign was the symbol on the map and it really looked great. You just zoom in, click on the sign you want and wala all the info pulls up. So we had an intern here create all of these symbols as .bmp files. Which I just found out yesterday is the only way besides .emf files that you can have an image for a picture symbol in ArcMap. So even though you can compress each file to a .jpg, when it imports back into Arcgis, it gets huge when you try to post the layers on ArcGIS server. So the size of the files turns into about 200 MB.

So I've converted the .bmp files from 24 bit to 8 bit, and knocked them down to 50 MB for the symbols (still a lot). I could not find anything on whether or not these images that drive the symbols could be stored outside the .mxd file? I can add all of them into a reference style, but when I add the symbol into the map, it still increases the size of the .mxd file. Any ideas?? Kinda stumped on this. It will run with the 8 bit .bmp files, but not very well.

Thanks for any suggestions. I haven't found anybody, even my GIS mentors and gurus that have dealt with this before. The map really pops with those symbols, so I haven't given up hope yet.