What is a decent budget for a wedding?

Hello Andi,

Congrats on your engagement! I would first consider your guest list (how many guests you're inviting will determine a huge chunk of your budget). You'll start getting a good sense of how much you'll spend on the reception to determine a reasonable budget for the wedding. Since price will vary depending on guests, location, venue, type of food you're having, it can really go from 8k-70k altogether. I would request for proposals from the venues and compare the prices for the reception portion. MOST places like hotel receptions will waive the room rental fee if you spend the minimum spending amount. And that limit is usually very easy to hit considering it includes food and drinks which can run up the tab.

My fiance and I started with determining how many guests we'll be having and how much we wanted to spend on each person. Once that was figured out, I emailed at least 25 venues to see who was in our price range which narrowed it down to 7 and than set up appointments to visit each one and discuss further details. After 2-3 months we finalized our decision and booked our venue. From there everything else fell into place (photographer, DJ, photobooth etc). It's important to book your venue first before booking anything else.

For the budget pick 3 things that you MUST have, and check the average price that vendors charge. Then try to save for the rest. The average 30K is sooo easy to hit because of venue + catering = 15K. Photos 3K flowers 3K

Hey Andi, congratulations on your engagement!

I like what Tori posted regarding the wedding budget articles and whatnot. As well as her advice to look at your current life and what's upcoming.

When I began wedding planning we looked at:

Guest List

How many people are we looking to invite. If we have too many guests, can we divide this list into an A-List and B-List of guests. The A-List are the "must invite", while the B-List can be the ones who get an invite if not everyone from the A-List can come.

Budget

This is what I looked at second. Once we knew a rough number of how many guests we were inviting, we agreed upon a number that we were comfortable spending and knew we could afford. We looked at our savings, how much we earned, and we knew how much each set of parents were gifting us.

After looking at all of this we (I) looked at online budget calculators for weddings and had a rough idea of how much of the budget we could spend on each aspect (venue, flowers, attire, etc.), so we planned accordingly.

This is all just one way of doing things. There's lots of ways to have a wedding that doesn't fit into a "wedding calculator" or a traditional format. You just need to find what works for you and your fiancé

Budgeting your wedding is a huge thing and to determine what is needed and not needed by considering what you want and how to go about purchasing/renting.

Weddings can be costly up to $50,000 if your spending on seasonal items. Compare pricing of purchasing vs. rentals to save on space at home if you don't have much area to keep everything that will need to resell after.

Some of the items that were a huge money saver were renting the vases, floral balls and money box less than $200, backdrop was also a rental under $100 with less stress of knowing it wasn't coming home and being returned.

Much of the small ticket items were purchased through amazon and ebay websites which are double in price retail wise.

Vistaprint was great for invitations, menu cards and thank you cards when receiving emails with discounts up to 5o% off regular price. Customer service is great if there are any concerns.

Real flowers weren't considered due to the cost of what the season has at cost vs. ordering what's not in the shop. Only costs incurred for the most part were venue, photographer, videographer and officiant that fit the budget. Total cost of our wedding was under $20 grand.

I agree with Tori! You also want to consider what you can afford to save every time you get paid as well. Those are great articles shes posted about budgets!

Like Tori said, you could be anywhere from $5,000-$$30,000++ it all just depends on what you are looking to do, how much you can afford.
Start with things that are important to you and your FH! For us venue was number one, and then photographer. Look at things that you really want to splurge on and things that you can DIY to keep costs down!

What my FH and I did when determining our budget is we looked at how long our engagement was going to be and how much money we would for sure have be able to save during that time. This was our high end for the budget. From there we aimed to spend as close to $10 000 as we could knowing that we had more money available if we wanted to splurge a bit more.

The best thing to start with is booking the venue. Most wedding venues will have packages that include certain things that would otherwise be an additional charge. From here you can book your next important vendor so that you can allocate more of your budget for them then you just keep booking everyone. There are lots of articles online that will help you with everything

Hi Andi, congrats on the engagement and welcome to the wedding wire community!

Personally me and my FH chose our budget of $20,000 based off a couple of things including; we were buying a house in 2018, want to have children as soon as possible after we get married, and what we can afford of course!

I know that here on WW we have some brides/grooms that are going to spend closer to the $5,000 by having a smaller backyard wedding, and then others that are going all out and beyond $30,000!! It really is all depending on what you can afford and if you are adamant about the amount of guests and how extravagant - how long you are willing to be engaged for before getting married.

Here are a few articles that might help:

How to Create a Wedding Budget

10 Ways to Avoid Going Over Budget on Your Wedding

The First 5 Things You Need to Do to Start Planning Your Wedding