Wedding Budget Calculator
Enter your total budget and see a realistic breakdown across venue, photography, flowers, attire and more — free, instant, no sign-up.
Enter your total wedding budget and see it split across twelve real categories — venue, photography, music, flowers, attire, and the buffer everyone forgets — using conventional US percentages as the starting point. Free, instant, entirely in your browser.
Breakdown — $30,000 total (US-convention starting split)
| Venue & catering | 40% | $12,000 |
| Photography & video | 12% | $3,600 |
| Music / entertainment | 8% | $2,400 |
| Flowers & decor | 8% | $2,400 |
| Attire | 7% | $2,100 |
| Planner & misc | 5% | $1,500 |
| Invitations & stationery | 3% | $900 |
| Hair & makeup | 3% | $900 |
| Cake | 2% | $600 |
| Transport | 2% | $600 |
| Rings | 5% | $1,500 |
| Buffer | 5% | $1,500 |
| Total | 100% | $30,000 |
Make it live: the Genie turns this split into a real budget and tracks it against actual vendor quotes as you book.
Make it a live budget →Percentages are the conventional US starting split — your real split should drift to match your priorities.
How to use the Wedding Budget Calculator
Enter your total
Whatever the number is — this works for a $8,000 elopement or an $80,000 celebration.
See the split
Twelve categories with dollar amounts and percentages, based on US wedding conventions.
Adjust mentally, then actually
The baseline shows you where your wedding is deliberately different. Copy or print it for the planning folder.
Make it live
The Genie seeds this same structure into a real tracked budget on your Wedding Board — estimates vs actuals, updated as you book.
What each category gets — flowers, rings, and the rest
The default split the calculator applies, with the arithmetic spelled out. Adjust to taste — it is a starting point, not a rulebook.
| Category | Share | On a $30k budget |
|---|---|---|
| Venue & catering | 40% | $12,000 |
| Photography & video | 12% | $3,600 |
| Music / entertainment | 8% | $2,400 |
| Flowers & decor | 8% | $2,400 |
| Attire | 7% | $2,100 |
| Rings | 5% | $1,500 |
| Planner & misc | 5% | $1,500 |
| Buffer | 5% | $1,500 |
| Invitations & stationery | 3% | $900 |
| Hair & makeup | 3% | $900 |
| Cake | 2% | $600 |
| Transport | 2% | $600 |
The flower budget. The default sets flowers & decor at 8% — $2,400 on a $30,000 wedding, $4,000 on $50,000. Greenery-heavy designs cost meaningfully less than bloom-heavy ones, and repurposing ceremony arrangements at the reception is the single biggest saving in the category. If quotes keep landing above your line, that is normal — florist quotes drift to 10–13% when nobody is watching, which is exactly why the calculator holds the line at 8.
The ring budget. Rings default to 5% — deliberately covering BOTH wedding bands, not the engagement ring (which usually predates the wedding budget entirely). On $30,000 that is $1,500 for the pair; spend it unevenly if your tastes are uneven.
Every other category follows the same logic: enter your real total in the calculator above and each line becomes a dollar figure you can sanity-check quotes against. The full reasoning per category — why venue eats 40%, what the buffer is for — is in the budget breakdown guide.
About the wedding budget calculator
Every wedding budget conversation starts with the same two questions: what is the total, and where does it go? This calculator answers the second one instantly. Enter your total and it splits it across the categories every wedding actually has — venue and catering, photography, music, flowers, attire, stationery, hair and makeup, cake, transport, rings — using the percentage conventions common for US weddings, including the line item most first drafts forget: a buffer, because something will run over. The percentages are a starting point, not a rule; coastal-city venues eat a bigger share, DIY flowers a smaller one. When you are ready to make it real, the Genie turns this same split into a live budget on your Wedding Board — tracking estimates against actuals per category, updating as you book real vendors at real prices.
- ✓A realistic starting split in one second
- ✓Categories real weddings have — including the buffer
- ✓Nothing uploaded, nothing to sign up for
- ✓Graduates into a live tracked budget when you are ready
Who the Wedding Budget Calculator is for
Keep planning
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The venue plus catering is by far the largest line for a typical US wedding — this calculator's baseline puts it at 40% of the total, which is the conventional starting point. All-inclusive venues concentrate more spend here but simplify every other line; raw spaces shift cost into catering, rentals, and decor.
Continue with the Genie
This tool is one small piece of WedGenie — an AI wedding planner that researches real vendors, tracks your checklist and budget, and remembers everything between conversations.
Plan my wedding with the Genie →