Estimated budget

Congratulations on the engagement! Wedding planning can be so much fun! You’re definitely on the right track setting your budget first. What is the best budget depends completely on your unique situation and what you can afford. Some people spend $500, others spend $50,000. There is no “right” amount to spend on your wedding.

The main thing is what you are comfortable spending. Definitely don’t go beyond your means or what you are comfortable with.


I also think it depends a lot on where you live as well. Good luck!

Agree with PP, I also didn’t realize that there were extra fees I didn’t take into consideration such as


Makeup trial Hair trial Meals for vendors (same contracts say you have to feed them or they get to leave for an hour)Tips (knew about but guess didn’t realize how quickly that adds up)
Take time to look over contracts and reviews. Also speak with your FH to see what you both care about having/not having at your wedding. This will help when making decisions and creating a day that you both want.

Woah that is very subjective. Ive seen people spend as little as $300 and as much as $40,000.

Your budget will be entirely based on what you and your fiancé can afford/feel comfortable spending. The average cost of a wedding in the US is around $32,000, but again, that is entirely up to the couple. Setting a budget first is definitely the right move, but if you are unsure of what things costs, you could do some research online.

As PP have said it’s going to depend. 1) what are you comfortable spending and 2) where are you located?


Look at your finances. How much each week/month can you/do you want to save? How long of an engagement do you want?Then, take a look at some vendors in your area. What do they cost? Can you afford them with what you can save? If not extend your engagement, increase what you’re saving, or adjust your vision.
We set our budget buy matching what my parents gave us. It was much lower than average and we had a beautiful wedding. It took a lot of research to get there, but we did it 😊Good luck and congratulations!

Congratulations on your engagement. Your budget definitely depends on what you and your fiancé can afford. No one can answer that question but you. It definitely depends on where you are located, your taste, your vision for your wedding etc.

Budget is subjective. I would do 2 things: 1. Come up with how much you and your fiance feel comfortable spending and 2. Look up the cost of wedding vendors in your area. Some places are cheaper than others and that budget will go a lot further. For instance, we initially budgeted $15,000 for a wedding in my high cost of living area and soon realized that wouldn't get us very far and upped it to $20,000, spending $23,000 total when all was said and done. There are people on here that put together a wedding for under $1000.

Congratulations!

Take a look at your finances, est. guest count, and if you're able to save money every month, then factor that in as well.

There isn't a 'prefect budget' for any wedding, it just comes down to what you're able to spend!

We came up with an idea of what we wanted to spend, an idea of how many guests we wanted to include, then started looking into catering and venue costs and realized we were WAY off, haha. Our ideal budget would’ve covered only food for the number of guests on our wishlist and nothing else ...so we had to rework. Lowered the guestcount and upped the money we were willing to spend. The point is, these things are fluid, and personal. A couple things that help are roughing numbers for a guestlist. We organized ours by MUST invites, really really want to invites, and, would love to have if there is space/budget. I took those numbers — both my max invite # and my min invite # (only the “must haves”) and reached out to a variety of caterers/venues to get an idea of cost. Wedding wire was a great resource to me for that. I also made lists of all the things we needed to spend on and tried to research what those would cost in my area, which were priorities (ex music, food, bar), and which we might be able to shortcut (ex florals, cake) if money was tight— these too will vary person to person

It's whatever comfortable spending. Some people spend $10K, others $100k. It's all subjective!

All the above comments are right on the money, pun intended. You need to figure out how much money you’re ok spending first and then figure out how much things cost in your area.
What I did is I started looking up vendors on WeddingWire (they have a really great selection for that) and try to get an idea of their pricing.
I didn’t contact any vendors but looked at websites to get an idea of an average cost in my area. I put that all in a spreadsheet for all the vendors to try and get an idea of how much I think I’d have to spend. Then I just cut back on some vendors that didn’t seem as important to me: for example florist would have been $5000 which was insane to me so I went the DIY route instead to cut down costs.There are also a multitude of articles on wedding budgets online. Here’s a good starting point:https://www.herecomestheguide.com/wedding-ideas/6-simple-steps-to-setting-a-wedding-budget

Congratulations on getting engaged. Unfortunately, it is very difficult for anyone to tell you the perfect budget as it really varies depending on location, what all you want, and how much you can realistically afford. I know we spent over $20,000 on our wedding.

The best way to figure out your budget is as follows:


Figure out how much you can save each month after paying all bills and putting money into savings. Then, multiply that amount by the length of your engagement. For example, say you were able to save $1000 per month after everything else was paid for. If your engagement is 18 months long, $1000 x 18 = $18000 for your budget. Figuring out what you can afford without going into debt is the first priority.
Once you’ve figured that out, then you need to figure out your guest list. Remember, your venue and catering costs should be about 50% of that budget and the fastest way to blow a budget is to have a lot of guests. Going off the $18000 example above, venue and catering would probably be around $9000. From there, take an average cost per person (let’s go with $100 for ease of math; though average will depend on your location) and divide it into the $9000. That would give you a guest list of around 90 people. Again, your location will be a factor in how far the money can go, but don’t forget that the per person price factors in staff, rentals, service cost, taxes, etc.
When you have those numbers, you’ll find it much easier to nail down the rest of your details and vendors.

You'll realize very quickly while wedding planning that expenses really add up, I was originally aiming to spend $5000 on our wedding, but due to COVID and all the venue switching I've been doing, our budget is at around $15000 for the wedding. I would definitely set some money aside, just in case you want to do any splurges.

I think it is so interesting to see how budgets range between different areas!

I'm in South Carolina and out wedding budget is right at $13,000 total - which we are spending every penny of so far! Budget total depends on your vision for the wedding. I know a lot of brides who had their wedding in a barn venue with a buffet style dinner and spent half of what we plan to spend. All about your wants!