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Wedding Budget Calculator
See how a typical couple splits a wedding budget across every category.
Where does a wedding budget actually go?
Every wedding is different, but planners and wedding-industry surveys have tracked spending patterns for decades, and the split is more consistent than most couples expect. Venue and catering reliably eat up the largest share — usually somewhere around 40–50% of the total — because they scale directly with guest count. Photography and video, attire and beauty, flowers and decor, and music or entertainment each tend to land in the high single digits to low double digits of the total.
This calculator applies typical percentage breakdowns to whatever total you enter, so you get a starting dollar figure for each category before you've called a single vendor. Treat the output as a planning baseline, not a rulebook — a couple who cares more about photography than flowers should absolutely shift dollars between categories. For a category-by-category deep dive, use the venue & catering calculator once you have a guest count in mind.
Frequently asked questions
Where do engagement rings and the honeymoon fit into this budget?
They usually don't — most wedding-budget surveys and this calculator treat the ring (bought before the engagement, not the wedding) and the honeymoon (a trip, not a wedding-day expense) as separate line items outside the core wedding budget. Use the dedicated ring and honeymoon calculators in this suite for those.
Are these percentages the same everywhere in the US?
No. Regional cost of living, local vendor pricing and guest-count norms all shift the split — a 50-guest backyard wedding and a 200-guest hotel ballroom wedding can have very different percentage breakdowns even at the same total budget. Use these percentages as a starting point, then adjust each category once you have real vendor quotes.
What if I want to increase one category, like photography?
Increase that category's dollar amount and reduce one or more of the others by the same amount so the total stays fixed — this calculator shows suggested percentages, not fixed requirements, so nothing stops you from reallocating.
Does this include the marriage license, officiant or wedding planner fees?
A wedding planner or coordinator fee is included as its own category. Smaller fixed costs like the marriage license and officiant fee are usually small enough to absorb into the miscellaneous/buffer category, though you can also add them to the venue category if you prefer to track them separately.