Wedding Budget Calculator
Enter your total budget and guest count and see a realistic breakdown across venue, catering, photography, flowers and more, based on what US couples actually spend. Free, instant, no sign-up.
Enter your total wedding budget and your guest count and see it split across fourteen real lines — venue, catering, photography, music, flowers, attire, tips and fees, and the buffer everyone forgets — based on what 10,474 US couples actually spent. It sizes catering per guest and tells you honestly when a guest list does not fit. Free, instant, entirely in your browser.
Tight, but it fits. To leave $3,500 for a basic venue, the plan moved $2,200 from photography & video, flowers & decor, music, attire, never below their low-end prices.
Your budget per guest: $300. The US average is $292 (117 guests, about $34,000).
Breakdown — $30,000 total, 100 guests (starting split from what US couples spend)
| Venue & rentals | 12% | $3,500 |
| Catering & bar | 45% | $13,400 |
| Cake & desserts | 1% | $300 |
| Photography & video | 7% | $2,233 |
| Flowers & decor | 5% | $1,633 |
| Music | 4% | $1,289 |
| Attire | 4% | $1,345 |
| Hair & makeup | 1% | $300 |
| Rings | 5% | $1,500 |
| Planner, officiant & misc | 4% | $1,200 |
| Invitations & stationery | 1% | $300 |
| Transport | 2% | $600 |
| Tips & fees | 3% | $900 |
| 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 →The split is what 10,474 US couples actually spent (The Knot 2026 Real Weddings Study), with 3% held for tips and fees and a 5% buffer. Catering is sized from your guest count; the venue gets the rest of the venue-and-food half. Sources and reasoning are in the budget breakdown guide.
How to use the Wedding Budget Calculator
Enter your total and guests
Whatever the numbers are — this works for a $8,000 elopement or an $80,000 celebration.
See the split
Fourteen lines with dollar amounts, catering sized from your guest count, and a check on whether it fits.
Adjust on purpose
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.
Prefer to watch? The 3-minute explainer
How Should I Split a $30,000 Wedding Budget?
Read the transcript
The short answer 0:00
How should you split a $30,000 wedding budget? Here's the short answer. About half goes to the venue and the food. About 10% to photography and video. 8% to flowers and decor, and 6% to music. And keep 8% back for tips, fees and surprises, because three in four couples go over their original budget. These are the numbers behind WedGenie's free wedding budget calculator.
Where these numbers come from 0:27
These shares come from what real couples spent. The Knot's 2026 Real Weddings Study asked more than 10,000 couples who married in 2025. The average wedding cost about $34,000, for 117 guests. That's roughly $292 per guest. And the venue, rentals, food, cake and drinks took 53% of it.
Your guest count decides it 0:54
But a percentage only tells half the story, because food is priced per guest, and your photographer isn't. Meet our example couple, Sofia and Jake: $30,000 and 120 guests. That's $250 a guest, less than average. At US-average food and drink prices, about $134 a guest once the service charge and tax are added, catering for 120 would cost about $16,000. That's more than their whole venue-and-food half.
Three honest options 1:26
So they have three honest options. One: serve a buffet with beer and wine, about $86 a guest, all in. Catering drops to about $10,300, and the venue still gets about $4,400. Two: invite about 115 guests instead of 120. Or three: find about $1,000 more. The calculator shows all three in seconds.
The money couples forget 1:52
Now, the money couples forget. Catering quotes often leave out a service charge of 18 to 25%, plus sales tax. And that service charge is not the tip. So ask every caterer and venue for one all-in price per guest. Then there are the tips themselves, the marriage license, and the postage. That's what the 3% tips and fees line is for.
Where cutting actually works 2:18
Where does cutting actually work? Start with the guest list: 20 fewer guests saves roughly $3,000. Then pick the month before the day. In The Knot's data, January weddings averaged about $4,000 less than May, but Friday weddings were not cheaper than Saturdays. And pouring beer, wine and one signature cocktail costs about $10 to $15 a guest less than a full bar.
Do it for your number, free 2:44
And protect what lasts: photography is where most couples plan to splurge. To do all of this for your own number, use WedGenie's free wedding budget calculator. Enter your total and your guest count, pick a food style, and it tells you honestly whether it fits. No sign-up. The link is in the description. It's free at wedgenie.ai, the AI wedding planner.
Narration is an AI voice; the example couple is illustrative. Watch on YouTube
This is one piece. The Genie plans the rest.
Tell it about your wedding once: it builds your Wedding Board, finds real vendors with sources, and makes the photos, invitations and films, all in the same chat.
What each category gets — flowers, rings, and the rest
The default split the calculator applies before your guest count moves money between venue and food, with the arithmetic spelled out. It describes what US couples actually spent; adjust it on purpose.
| Category | Share | On a $30k budget |
|---|---|---|
| Venue & rentals | 25% | $7,500 |
| Catering & bar | 24% | $7,200 |
| Photography & video | 10% | $3,000 |
| Flowers & decor | 8% | $2,400 |
| Music | 6% | $1,800 |
| Attire | 5% | $1,500 |
| Rings | 5% | $1,500 |
| Buffer | 5% | $1,500 |
| Planner, officiant & misc | 4% | $1,200 |
| Tips & fees | 3% | $900 |
| Transport | 2% | $600 |
| Cake & desserts | 1% | $300 |
| Hair & makeup | 1% | $300 |
| Invitations & stationery | 1% | $300 |
Where these numbers come from. The Knot 2026 Real Weddings Study asked 10,474 US couples married in 2025 what they spent: an average of about $34,000 for 117 guests, or $292 a guest. Venue, rentals, catering, cake and drinks took 53% of it. The calculator gives that block 50% after holding 3% for tips and fees and 5% as a buffer, and keeps the rest close to the same study's shares.
Why the guest count matters. Food and drink are priced per head; photographers, DJs, attire and rings cost the same for 80 guests or 150. So the calculator sizes catering from your guest count, using a per-guest price that includes the service charge and sales tax, and gives the venue what is left of the half. At $30,000 and US-average food prices it fits about 115 guests; with a buffet and beer and wine, about 180.
The flower budget. Flowers & decor get 8%, $2,400 on a $30,000 wedding and $4,000 on $50,000. Couples who hired a florist spent $2,800 on average in The Knot's 2026 study (59% hired one). 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.
The ring budget. Rings get 5%, the share The Knot says couples usually spend on wedding bands. It covers BOTH bands, not the engagement ring, which usually predates the wedding budget. On $30,000 that is $1,500 for the pair, the same as Zola's average for wedding rings.
Every other category follows the same logic: enter your real total and guest count above and each line becomes a dollar figure you can sanity-check quotes against. The full reasoning, with sources, is in the budget breakdown guide.
Tracking it after the split. Once you have the split, you need somewhere to track real quotes against it. Bliss & Bone gives away a wedding budget template for Google Sheets and Excel that works out the gap between estimated and actual costs and flags overspend as you go. Split the total here, track it there, or let the Genie keep the live version on your Wedding Board.
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 from real spending data. The split comes from The Knot 2026 Real Weddings Study, which asked 10,474 US couples married in 2025 what they spent: venue, rentals, catering, cake and drinks took 53% of it. The calculator gives that block half your budget, holds 3% for tips and fees and 5% as a buffer, and spreads the rest across photography, flowers, music, attire, rings, the planner, stationery and transport. Then it does what a percentage alone cannot: it sizes catering from your guest count, because food and drink are priced per head while photographers and DJs are not, and it tells you plainly when a guest list does not fit the budget. When you are ready to make it real, the Genie turns the same plan into a live budget on your Wedding Board, tracking estimates against actuals 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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Wedding Budget Calculator — questions couples ask
About half. In The Knot 2026 Real Weddings Study, venue, rentals, catering, cake and drinks took 53% of what 10,474 US couples spent. This calculator gives that block 50% (venue & rentals 25%, catering & bar 24%, cake 1%) after holding 3% for tips and fees and 5% as a buffer. With fewer dollars per guest than the US average of $292, food takes more of the half and the venue less, which is why the calculator asks for your guest count.
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.
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