Wedding Budget Calculator
Enter your total budget and guest count to see how much to set aside for the venue, catering, photography, and every other line, with a suggested target for each and a per-guest reality check.
A typical wedding budget puts 30-35% toward the venue, 25-30% toward catering and bar, and 10-12% toward photography and video, then fills in music, flowers, attire, and the smaller lines, plus 3-5% for vendor tips.
Split your budget by category
Enter your all-in budget, from $1,000 up.
Used for the per-guest lines. Defaults to 100.
How the budget split works
Every category here starts from a percentage range, not a round-number guess. The venue takes the biggest bite, catering and bar come next, and the smaller lines fall in behind them. Those percentages come straight from our wedding budget breakdown, which pulls from The Knot, Zola, and WeddingWire spending data.
Ranges alone can't be an allocation, though. Add up the low ends of all twelve categories and you land near 101 percent; add up the high ends and you're at 128 percent. So the calculator takes the midpoint of each range, scales those midpoints to your budget, and rounds them with a largest-remainder step. The result is a single suggested target per category, and the targets always add back up to your budget to the dollar. Because those ranges overlap, a scaled target can land a little below a category's own low end. That's expected: the range shows a category's typical share on its own, and the target is what fits once every line shares one budget.
A worked example: a $33,000 budget
Say your total is $33,000, the national-average wedding. Enter that and the calculator suggests about $9,367 for the venue, $7,926 for catering and bar, and $3,170 for photography and video. Music lands near $1,873, flowers near $2,594, and the planner, attire, stationery, officiant, favors, vendor tips, and buffer fill in the rest. Each target is that category's midpoint scaled to fit your total, so together they sum to $33,000 exactly, not $32,998 or $33,004.
The per-guest lines are the gut check. At 100 guests, $33,000 is $330 a head all in, and the $7,926 catering-and-bar target works out to about $79 per guest. That sits just below the typical $95 to $225 band for food and drink, which is why the calculator flags it instead of calling the plan comfortable. The catering line's tight for 100 guests: trim the guest list and the per-guest number climbs back into the band, or plan a leaner menu and hold the count where it is.
These are national averages
Treat the output as a well-informed starting point, not a quote. Wedding costs swing widely by region: the same guest list can cost twice as much in a coastal metro as it does three states inland. A $33,000 budget stretches a lot further in some markets than others. Our tipping and cost norms by state and by city pages show how far the numbers move once you zoom in on where you're actually getting married.
What to do when a category busts its range
Real weddings don't respect tidy percentages. Maybe the venue you fell for eats 40 percent instead of 35, or the band you want costs more than the music line allows. When one category runs over, pull the extra from the most flexible lines first: flowers and decor, favors and gifts, stationery, and the miscellaneous buffer absorb cuts with the least pain. Protect catering, photography, and the vendor-tip line last, since guests notice thin food and you'll want those photos forever. Re-run the calculator with a smaller total to see what a leaner plan looks like, then decide where the real money goes.
Frequently Asked Questions
How should I split my wedding budget by category?
Start from percentages, not guesses. The venue takes the largest share at 30 to 35 percent, catering and bar come next at 25 to 30 percent, and photography and video run 10 to 12 percent. Music, flowers, a planner, attire, and the smaller lines fill in from there. Enter your total above and the calculator turns those percentages into dollar targets that add up to your budget exactly.
What percentage of a wedding budget goes to the venue?
Plan for 30 to 35 percent of your total budget. That share climbs at all-inclusive venues that fold catering into one price, and it drops at rental-only spaces where you bring in your own caterer. If your venue is all-inclusive, expect the venue and catering lines to blur together.
How much should catering cost per guest?
A typical wedding runs about 95 to 225 dollars per guest for food and drink combined, roughly 70 to 150 dollars for food and 25 to 75 dollars for the bar. The calculator divides your catering and bar target by your guest count so you can sanity-check it against that band before you sign a caterer.
Do these percentages change for a small or large wedding?
The percentages hold up well across most budgets, but guest count bends catering. Past 200 guests, food and drink often push beyond 40 percent of the total, so the calculator flags a large-wedding note at that point. For very small weddings, fixed costs like photography and the officiant take a bigger relative bite, so treat the ranges as a starting point rather than a rule.
What if my budget is much smaller than the $33,000 example?
The math scales cleanly. The calculator works from $1,000 up, so a $12,000 budget gets the same percentage split as a $60,000 one, just with smaller dollar figures. The targets always add back up to whatever total you enter.
Where do these percentages come from?
They come from our wedding budget breakdown, which is built from The Knot, Zola, and WeddingWire spending data. The calculator uses the midpoint of each published range and applies a largest-remainder rounding step so every dollar is accounted for. Nothing is hardcoded in the page; the categories and percentages are read from a single data file.
Don't forget the vendor tips line
Your budget sets aside 3 to 5 percent for tips. Our full wedding tip calculator turns that into exact per-vendor amounts, a cash denomination breakdown, and a printable envelope checklist.
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<p style="text-align:center;font-size:12px;color:#9ca3af;margin-top:8px;">Powered by <a href="https://weddingtipcalculator.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wedding Tip Calculator</a></p>
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Last updated: May 2026