Wedding Dress Budget

I kept my dress budget at $800 so after alterations it would still be around or under 1,000. You can underestimate how much alterations cost when buying a dress so add that to your budget as well!

What’s your overall wedding budget? If your total budget is $5000 it’ll be a different answer to if your total budget is $50,000.

My dress was about $1800. Alterations should be about $350, so I’m under $2500. I agree that it depends on the overall budget of your wedding and how important the dress is to you!

Hi Catarina,
Congratulations, I think your overall budget needs to be considered first, estimate your largest expenses, venue, food, photographer and figure how high you would be willing to go, I didn't do that, I set a amount of $2000 for my dress, and I tried on about 30 dresses before I found my dream 👗 good luck!!!

My overall wedding budget was about 20k and I budgeted 2k for my dress (it came in at $2005.00 before alterations) I think everyone’s budget is different depending upon your whole budget.

It will depend on your overall budget and what you are comfortable spending. I was unrealistic and only “planned” to spend $300 but no more than $500 because my dress wasn’t where I wanted to spend my $$. Well that didn’t go as planned and I ended up spending $1300 not including alterations. I loved the dress and had the wiggle room in our budget.

There is no way to answer that question. It's like asking how much to spend on an outfit for work. Some people go to Goodwill and spend $5; some get designer dresses that cost hundreds or even thousands.

You really need to look at two things. First, what is your total wedding budget? In general, attire (dress, veil, his suit or tux) will be about 5% of your budget.

Second, how important is the dress to you? Some brides will cut back on everything else to have a high end designer dress. Others don't care all that much about the dress, and would rather spend their money on other things. Just remember that if you spend more than 5% of your budget on attire, you'll need to figure out where else to cut back, or you'll overrun your budget.

I spent $150 because I wanted a nice dress but I didn't want to spend more than $300 on a dress that I wore for a few hours. I spend $300 on my graduation dress and i still regret it

I didn’t want to spend much. My budget was $250, but I ended up choosing a dress that was $500. My mom gifted me my dress, which was a surprise cause she gave her cc when I wasn’t looking!
My alterations came out to $500, so if my mom didn’t gift me my dress I would have spent $1000 not including the shoes, head piece and jewelry.

Oh goodness. Originally I wanted to spend no more than $200. However found a dress I absolutely adored but $450. Went ahead and bought it since I loved it so much.


In some areas, it’s hard to find dresses under $200. My area: I only found 2 dresses under that budget.

My mom offered to pay for mine and set a max of 5K ( which is crazy to me) My dress ended up being 2800 but I also loved a 900$ dress. It comes down to what you want, material, style, and where you shop.

It definitely depends on your overall budget for the wedding. We have a 10k budget and I didn't want to spend any more than $800-$1000 on my dress. I ended up buying one for $650, returning it and getting one I liked better for $350 ($475 after alterations)

I originally wanted to stay under $1000 however fell in love with a dress that was a little over $2000. I still have to get alterations. It really just depends on what you can afford.

My goal was to keep my dress under $1000. I actually ended up getting a clearance dress for $599 and spent basically that amount on my veil (but I knew I'd regret not getting the veil so it was 100000% worth it)! So in the end with dress + veil I went roughly $100 over my budget

You budget is completely up to you! what are you comfortable spending on a dress? do you want one dress for the whole day? or were you looking at a second dress for reception?

Most budgets i've seen are anywhere from $1000 - $3000.

My dress with alterations, shoes and veil cost me just under $3000.