Wedding Budget Calculator

Enter your total and see where it typically goes — venue to stationery, in dollars, before you've spent any of them.

How the typical split works

Planners budget from percentages, not guesses. The single biggest line is always venue and catering — roughly 45% of everything you spend, because it scales with your guest count. Photography and video usually take another 12%, flowers and décor about 10%, and attire around 8%. The long tail — rings, stationery, cake, transport, the officiant — runs 2–3% each, which is exactly why those "small" costs blow budgets: there are a lot of them.

The one line couples skip is the buffer. Weddings reliably attract surprises — an alteration, a permit, a last-minute rental — and a 5–6% cushion is the difference between absorbing them and re-negotiating your bar package in the final week.

Make the split yours

These are starting points, not rules. If photography is what you'll care about in ten years, move budget there and trade down on flowers or transport — every dollar added to one category has to come out of another, and doing that math up front is the entire point. The per-guest figure is the other useful lens: catering quotes are priced per head, so knowing your all-in per-guest number makes venue comparisons honest.