💒 Wedding Budget Planner

Set the total you are actually willing to spend, choose your guest count, and get a per-category breakdown with sensible starting percentages you can push around. The cost-per-guest number keeps everyone honest.

Adjust the split — percentages auto-normalise to 100.
Rule of thumb: every guest costs the food-and-drink share of your venue budget. Ten fewer guests is usually a four-figure saving.
Method, where budgets actually blow up, and the food maths

Method. Total £ × normalised category %. The starting splits follow the shape of typical UK wedding-spend surveys: venue and catering together take close to half; photography, attire, flowers, music and the long tail share the rest; 8–10% contingency is not optional — something always costs more than quoted.

Where budgets blow up. Venues quote “from” prices for a Tuesday in February; the Saturday-in-July price is the real one. Drinks packages multiply by actual consumption, not expectation. And “guests we must invite” grows the list by 20 — each one costing the per-head catering you chose.

The food maths. If catering is £85 a head, a party of 70 costs £5,950 before a single canapé upgrade. This is why the guest list is the budget: cutting ten people funds the photographer upgrade, and nobody remembers chair covers.

Edge cases. The planner prices GB pounds and assumes one event day; multi-day, destination or split-ceremony weddings need the same categories multiplied per day. Deposits cluster 6–12 months out — track them monthly, not in one scary January.

Method: percentage allocation with normalisation; splits are planning guidance, not quotes. Not financial advice. Last reviewed 2026-09-21.