Budgeting Tool: Is it the tool or me?

Personally I adjusted the tool a lot! I entered my desired budget and then let it divide that up, and after doing some research about my area and what matched my vision I made adjustments. The tool definitely low-balled on my venue as well as my dress but that's probably because I went way over what I wanted to spend on the dress at least. I think the tool is based on average percentages so it's easily inaccurate.

Also 250 is honestly pretty normal to me for a wedding. We're having 75 people and I feel like that's TINY because almost every wedding I've been to has been between 200-350 guests.

Im planning a 250 person wedding and so far im at just under 20k (almost everything is done). I know how you feel with it being hard and not being able to cut family out. Trust me, if you budget your butt off it is completely possible to have a beautiful wedding. I found a lot of vendors were so willing to give me discounted prices after I explained my situation to them and this brought down everything significantly. Lots of vendors who weren't able to offer me prices within my budget referred me to other vendors who COULD and that's how I was able to keep costs so low.

The biggest cost for me was venue at $53/head. There were some others that were much more expensive but honestly, all I can say is dig deep and you'll find someone. You might have to bite the bullet with venue as it is very dependent on you location but with everything else, you can for sure find ways to lower costs.

My biggest bit of advice is to book separate vendors because I found "all in one" companies were SO much more expensive than speaking to different people. For example, I booked my backdrop separately, floral centerpieces and bouquet separately, chairs separately, etc and kept total decor at under 3k with nothing being done DIY and real flower centerpieces, however the MINIMUM quote I got from all in one decor companies was 8k (using fake flowers too!). Honestly, I always thought it was useless to look at calculators and discuss with other people because it really boils down to how hard YOU work in keeping the prices low. My original wedding budget was 30k as well based off of my cousin's wedding with almost the same guestlist and now that I've got everything finalized, mine has more decorations/things going on and is 10k cheaper.

I found the budgeting tool unhelpful as it was laid out, but after adjusting it a lot it's starting to show realistic projections. I bought a used wedding dress and my jewelry is heirloom, so I'm not using any of those categories. We aren't having bridesmaids or groomsmen so all of those lines were taken out. I added additional lines in the category of invitations to separate save-the-dates, invitations, thank you notes, and postage. We're not going to have a videographer.

My leading frustration with this website is that it operates on a lot of assumptions of what it thinks a wedding should be, and that seems to be expensive. I'm not using their recommended vendors for things that I can do myself. I'm not shelling out money for things that I don't think are necessary (like engagement photos). But it is helpful to have a starting place, and ultimately your wedding is your wedding, not what any website or blog recommends or says is tradition or necessary.