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Wedding Budget Calculator

Use this free wedding budget calculator to split your total budget across every part of the day. Enter your budget and guest count, adjust the category percentages to match your priorities, and see each allowance and the cost per guest — with a live allocation chart.

How it works

A wedding budget is one of the biggest spending plans most people ever make, and it goes wrong in a predictable way: the venue and catering are booked first, the money runs out, and everything else — photography, music, flowers — gets squeezed into whatever is left. A percentage split fixes that by giving every category its share before anything is booked. This calculator starts from your total budget and your guest count, splits the total by the standard percentages, and shows the cost per guest, so you can see whether the plan fits before you sign a single contract.

The standard split used here is one planners commonly recommend: venue and reception 40%, catering and drinks 25%, photography and video 10%, attire and beauty 7%, music and entertainment 5%, flowers and decor 5%, and everything else — rings, transport, stationery, and the small items — 8%. Those numbers add up to 100%, and every percentage is editable, because no two weddings are alike. A backyard wedding may spend almost nothing on a venue and much more on catering; a wedding with a live band will push music above 5%; a couple who elope and celebrate later may spend most of the budget on photography. Change the percentages to match your priorities, and the amounts follow.

The per-guest figure is the number that keeps the budget honest. Divide the total budget by the guest count and you get the cost of one more person at the wedding. On a $30,000 budget for 100 guests, each guest costs $300 — and most of that is catering and a share of the venue. That is why the guest list is the single biggest lever on a wedding budget: cutting 20 guests from that wedding saves about $6,000, more than most couples save by haggling over flowers or music. When the list grows, check the per-guest cost first, before looking for cheaper vendors.

A few costs hide outside the percentages and catch couples out. Sales tax and service charges on catering can add 20% or more to the catering bill; a venue's quoted price may exclude the ceremony fee, the coat check, or the overtime charge if the party runs late; and tips for vendors, postage for invitations, and the marriage license are easy to forget entirely. The "other" category at 8% is meant to absorb the small items, but read every quote carefully and ask what is excluded. If a quote looks too good, the missing items are usually in the fine print.

Use the calculator as a planning tool, not a spending order. Set the total you can actually afford — not the total a venue suggests — then split it, then get quotes category by category and compare each quote with its allowance. If photography quotes come in above the 10% allowance, either raise photography's share and cut another category, or accept a shorter package. The point of the split is that every trade-off is visible: money moved into one category has to come out of another, and the total never quietly grows.

Worked example

A couple has a total budget of $30,000 and 100 guests.

Step 1: The cost per guest is $30,000 ÷ 100 = $300.00.
Step 2: The venue allowance is 40% of $30,000 = $12,000.
Step 3: Catering and drinks are 25% of $30,000 = $7,500.
Step 4: Photography and video are 10% of $30,000 = $3,000.
Step 5: The rest follows the same way — attire $2,100, music $1,500, flowers $1,500, and other costs $2,400 — totalling $30,000.

The result: venue $12,000, catering $7,500, photography $3,000, and $300 per guest. A second check with a smaller wedding: a $20,000 budget for 80 guests gives $250 per guest and a venue allowance of $8,000 — the percentages stay the same, so the plan scales cleanly to any size.

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