Average Budget question

Do you mean what is the wedding budget you should be working toward? No one here can really answer that. Budgets on this site range from under $1,000 to over $100,000. It’s all just the area you live in, the number of guests you want to host, and the kind of wedding you want.

Nobody can decide your budget for you. There's bride's with $3000 to $30000 weddings on here all the time.
Do you want a huge wedding? Small intimate? Destination? Church? Buffet or plated? All these change how much you spend on top of the general location.
It's estimated the average wedding in the US costs about $25k. I couldn't justify that so I did $10k. Id say look around at venues and vendors and get an idea of what you like and what it costs

If your location and venue are correct, I would say you want to look toward the higher side of saving. If you don't spend it, then you have it, and if you need it, it's there - but I can't give you a number.

This def depends on size of your wedding too. My friend had 600 people at hers and her budget was like more than three times of mine. I had 250 guests. So as you can see, the guest numbers do bloat how much you spend.

I think the best thing for you to do is look at the pricing of venues, photographers, and DJs, etc. in your area. I live in Columbus, OH. We’re able to have our wedding for around $13,000 but I was struggling to do that with about 100 guests. It really depends on what you want.

I would say that you should sit down and look at your current bills and spending habits. Put all of your bills in a spreadsheet and how much you make a month. Take a look at how much you spent on groceries and how much you spend on "fun" stuff. Then decide how much you want to save based on that. We are saving as much as possible while still allowing ourselves to go out once in a while. Then multiply how much you have per month times how many months you have until your wedding. Now you know an absolute max max budget

Only you can decide that. We figured out our budget by deciding what we were comfortable spending out of our current savings, then multiplying the amount we could realistically save each month by the number of months until the wedding.

Do not pay attention to the "average budget." It is way above what most couples spend. This occurs due to two factors:

1. The surveys are taken among subscribers to bridal magazines or people on online forums. Those people are typically spending more for their weddings than others, because they are planning larger and more complicated weddings.

2. The average is brought way up by a few very expensive weddings. For example, suppose that four couples spend $10,000 each for their weddings, and one spends $145,000. The average is $29,000. But most of the couples have spent far less than that. Of course, the wedding industry (which takes these surveys) has no incentive to point out either of those facts, because it wants people to think they need to spend more.

What your wedding will cost depends a lot on the size of your guest list, the area in which you are having the wedding, and the style of the wedding (e.g., Saturday night dinner and dancing, brunch, or afternoon cake and punch). So think about those issues, and start getting some price estimates. In general, your reception costs will be about half of your total wedding costs, so researching reception costs can help narrow things down. And if those estimates are too much for your budget, start thinking about reducing your guest list, switching to a different style of wedding, increasing your savings rate, or pushing back your wedding.

My partner and I did a lot of research of what different things cost and what we both cared about. We then sat down with that knowledge and discussed each item to come up with a maximum, like $500 for flowers, or whatever. We wanted to be realistic about how much a wedding that we would actually enjoy would cost, but also try to find less expensive alternatives as we are paying for it all ourselves!

Hi. That depends on what you want and where you live. We started off with a $15k budget. It's now at $40k because I like nice things. I'm not getting everything I want, but I'm getting the majority. That doesn't include the contingency fund that we should have.

My advice is to figure out how much you want to spend and what are the things that are important to you. I don't believe in going in debt for your wedding and then have no furniture in your home. Decide what's important to you and budget accordingly. I hope that helps.

I'd suggest window shopping vendors in your area. Look at your top pick pricing, and determine your possible budget based on your timeline. If they match, awesome! If not, that's also a great place to start negotiations from and come up with back up plans.