How the Wedding Budget Planner Works
Planning a wedding means juggling a lot of moving costs at once. Enter estimates for venue and catering, photography and videography, attire and rings, the honeymoon, and setting up your new home together, and this planner adds them up into one total wedding budget you can track against as quotes come in.
Venue and catering is almost always the biggest single line item, since it scales directly with your guest count — it commonly makes up 40-50% of the total. Photography, attire, and rings round out the next-largest categories, while the honeymoon and home setup costs are often the easiest to scale up or down depending on what's left in the budget.
The median U.S. wedding (excluding honeymoon) tends to run in the tens of thousands of dollars, but real costs vary hugely by region, guest count, and venue style, so a national average isn't a great planning number on its own. Update each category here as real vendor quotes come in, and you'll always know exactly where your total stands.
Frequently Asked Questions
Recent industry surveys put the median U.S. wedding cost (excluding the honeymoon) somewhere around $30,000, though it varies enormously by region, guest count, and venue choice. Enter your own category estimates here to build a budget that fits your actual plans rather than a national average.
Venue and catering is typically the single largest line item, often 40-50% of the total budget, since it scales directly with guest count. Photography/videography and attire round out the next biggest categories for most couples.
Set a target for each category before you start booking vendors, then update this calculator with real quotes as you receive them. Trimming lower-priority categories first — rather than cutting the venue after it's booked — is the easiest way to stay on budget.