How to Create a Wedding Budget in the UK: Step-by-Step Guide + Budget Tool

In all the excitement of announcing your engagement, you could be forgiven for pushing plans like the wedding budget aside in favour of the more fun parts of your wedding planning, like scouring Pinterest for dresses or throwing an engagement party.

But if we could offer one golden piece of advice before wedding fever sets in, it’s to sit down together to discuss your wedding budget. After all, you’ll want to make sure you can afford to make your wedding dreams a reality and that you’re both on the same page when it comes to wedding costs.

The average wedding cost in the UK currently stands at £23,250, which gives you an idea of UK couples’ typical wedding budget. Some may be able to spend more, while other couples may choose to plan on a smaller budget – it’s all about making what you can afford work for you, and that starts with knowing exactly what your wedding budget is.

To make the process of budgeting for a wedding easier, our step-by-step guide includes a typical wedding budget breakdown for a UK celebration as well as some brilliant budget hacks and everything you need to help you set your own wedding budget.

Please note: this is a guide designed to advise you as you plan based on the average wedding budget in the UK, which is around £20,000. It’s important to adjust the spends to suit your needs and wants.

Hitched, and the materials and information it contains, are not intended to and do not constitute financial or tax advice and should not be used as such. You should always consult with your financial and tax advisors about your specific circumstances.  

Wedding Budget Breakdown: How to Plan a Wedding Budget 

Our tips will help you plan a wedding budget you can afford, as well as guide you on how to break down the cost of a wedding by section. After all, if you haven’t planned a wedding before, it can be difficult to know which aspects of your day will require more of your budget than others.

And remember, as uncomfortable as talking about money can be, being on the same page with your wedding budget will undoubtedly make your wedding planning journey much more enjoyable – not to mention give you the best possible start to married life. By knowing what your limits are, you’ll be able to enquire only with wedding suppliers that you know you can afford. Happy planning!

• Wedding Budget Breakdown
• How to Make a Wedding Budget
• How to Stick to Your Wedding Budget

Wedding Budget Breakdown

Before you get started on setting out your wedding expenses, it’s important to find the right budgeting tools for you. Our helpful budgeting tool (as shown above) couldn’t be easier to use and allows you to update your costs and payments as you go, with a breakdown of all the main elements couples would typically include in their wedding budget, with the option to add or remove things to suit your needs.

Typical wedding budget UK breakdown

To help you break down your wedding costs, our guide outlines what percentage of your wedding budget should be allocated where. It gives examples based on how real couples divide up their wedding budgets (according to the typical UK wedding budget) to give you a clear idea of what your budget allows you.

Our guide is based on average wedding budgets spent by thousands of couples in the UK, but it’s important to remember that every couple’s priorities will be different. If the music and entertainment is way more important to you than your outfits or hair and makeup, your wedding budget should favour those areas.

Working out your wedding budget is personal, and it can be tailored however you want. Our guide is just that – a guide to how wedding budgets are traditionally split by cost.

Venue and Catering

OK, 40% sounds like a lot, but there’s so much covered in this chunk of the budget. This should ideally cover the cost of both your ceremony and reception venue hire, so it’s worth deciding early on if you’re planning to host the whole wedding in one place, or if you’re having separate ceremony and reception locations.

This area of the budget should also cover the wedding catering, including any drinks, canapés and snacks you’re planning to provide. Some couples choose to bring in outside catering for the evening food, and this should also come under this umbrella.

All-inclusive wedding packages can definitely take the stress out of the planning process and often work out better value for money than trying to arrange all of these elements separately. Most venues will have tiers to their packages, with price ranges per head. This will make it much easier to work out what your spend will be once you have nailed the guest list.

Photography and Videography

After your wedding venue and catering, we recommend spending the second largest chunk of the budget on your photography and videography. These will be what you look back on in years to come, so it’s important to hire a professional who will capture those special moments in the most beautiful way, while portraying a true reflection of your wedding style.

If the budget is tight, you might be wondering, ‘do I need a videographer?’ But we strongly suggest you consider it if you can afford to. Even if you have a great photographer, there’s no such thing as too much coverage when it comes to your big day and the more people you have capturing your wedding, the more likely you are to see things you might have missed.

Most couples will spend upward of £1,600 on their wedding photography and videography, even when planning a wedding on a smaller budget. It’s a huge priority for many – and we’re here for it! If you’re working with smaller numbers, ask your photographer about the option of half-day or shorter day packages, especially if you’re getting married outside of peak wedding season. 

Dress, Suit and Attire

Aim to allocate around 8% of your budget to your wedding outfits. Some will naturally want to spend more than this on their wedding dress or suit – this is one area of the planning where it’s very easy to get swept up in the moment – but try to be mindful that costs will have to be cut elsewhere to make that happen. We’d recommend trying to include all accessories under this umbrella too.

It’s worth noting that this budget breakdown doesn’t include the cost of bridesmaid dresses or wedding party suits. If you’re planning on paying for those, you might want to factor those costs into the ‘extras’ section further down.

Music and Entertainment

Before we delve into this one, note that music and entertainment are two separate things that need to be considered in this section of the wedding budget breakdown. But if the budget is minimal, it can be combined. Wedding music will usually include a wedding DJ, though may just be someone manning a Spotify playlist if you’re doing a DIY job!

Wedding entertainment covers a much broader sphere – this could be anything from fireworks and magicians to illustrators and lawn games. If the budget permits, entertainment really can mean anything. For some couples, it’s a huge part of the wedding experience, for others, less so. Adjust your wedding budget accordingly!

Flowers and Décor

Your budget for wedding flowers and décor can cover a wide range of things, so if you’re working to a smaller budget, you’ll need to prioritise. Work out which areas of the wedding flowers are non-negotiable – do you need bouquets for the bridesmaids, or would they look just as striking wearing a corsage around their wrist? Are there areas where your flowers could be reused? For example, a floral ceremony arch will double up as a great wedding photo booth backdrop.

Your florist will be able to advise you more on the costs of individual items, as they’ll be determined by factors such as which flowers you want and whether or not they’re in season, the size of your arrangements and the hours that need to be spent creating them.

If your floral and décor budget isn’t that big, look for naturally pretty and picturesque venues that require little additional décor, or see what your venue offers as part of its packages.

Stationery

Stationery and your invitations are a really important part of the planning. But your budget will need to cover more than just the invites. Many couples choose to send save the date cards alongside RSVP cards and thank-you cards, while on-the-day stationery items might include things like menus, place cards and the table plan.

There are absolutely no rules that state you need to include all those things by any means – choose which are right for you and drop the ones that aren’t. Many couples on a tight budget choose to use a wedding website to share information with their guests, as well as to organise their RSVPs. This will save you a huge amount on postage.

Transport

This chunk of the wedding budget will cover how you and your partner, and the rest of the wedding party, get to the venue. Ideally, it should also cover transport costs if your ceremony and reception are taking place in two different locations. You’ll need to advise your guests if there will be transport available between the venues or if they’ll be expected to walk or take public transport.

If you’re staying at the venue the night before the wedding, you may be able to put this allocation into another area of the wedding that’s a bigger priority for you. But if you’ve always dreamed of arriving at your wedding in a vintage car, for example, you may want to allocate a little bit more.

Hair and Makeup

For some, the budget here won’t feel like much – and if this is one area of the wedding you know you want to prioritise, then you may want to bump up that cost. 2% of a £20,000 wedding would be around £400 and for hair and makeup and, in reality, this would likely just cover on-the-day styling. Trials can sometimes cost extra – speak to your preferred stylists about what their packages include.

It's also worth noting that for couples who want to pay for other members of the wedding party – like the mothers or the bridesmaids – to have their hair and makeup done too, will likely need to increase this area of the budget.

Other (Gifts, Licences, Extras)

Use this chunk of cash to spend on areas that we haven’t mentioned above, particularly on things that are important to you as a couple, as well as those hidden wedding costs you might not have thought about.

Whether it’s bridesmaid shoes, favours, gifts for the wedding party, a wedding cake or the rings (see, £3,800 doesn’t seem like much now does it!?), note down the must-haves for your day in order of priority and dedicate this 19% to those areas.

Then there is the admin. No matter what your wedding budget, for example, you will need to set aside around £500 for ceremony costs if you’re planning on having a wedding that’s legally recognised.

This should cover the ceremony licence (£56 at a register office, around £104 at a registered religious building), as well as any paperwork. Note that if you’re planning to hire a wedding celebrant to conduct your ceremony, this will likely be a separate charge.

How to Make a Wedding Budget

Now you’re familiar with a typical wedding budget breakdown, it’s time to decide how much you and your partner can afford to spend. Planning a wedding on a budget, or simply budgeting for a wedding of any size, can feel stressful but having a number in mind will undoubtedly make the process easier.

We’ve compiled a step-by-step guide to working out a realistic wedding budget that will make you feel happy about what you’re spending and saving. Remember, no wedding is worth starting married life in unmanageable debt for – you and your friends and family will love the day, no matter what.

1. Decide what you can afford

The last thing you want on top of the pressure of planning a wedding is anxiety about where you’ll find the money to pay for your venue or supplier. It can be easy to get swept away with the idea of a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ day, but the only way to get through it with as little worry as possible is to be realistic.

Start with what kind of wedding do you both want? Expectations may need to be managed depending on budget:

• How much do you have in savings? How much of this are you willing to put towards the wedding? Still try to keep an emergency fund to cover things like car breakdowns or a new boiler and try not to dip into a special savings fund you’ve been building, such as a house deposit.
• Write down exactly how much take-home income you both get each month. Take away all your financial commitments that won’t change, e.g. rent/mortgage, gym membership, transport costs, food budget, a holiday you’ve already booked. On top of all the above, you’ll want to treat yourself to dinners out or movies with friends, a nice bottle of wine at the weekend and birthday gifts for friends and family, so set aside a realistic amount for that.
• What’s left is the amount each month you have to spend or save for your wedding. The best thing is to put this into a separate bank account as soon as your salary comes in, so you won’t be tempted to use some. We’d recommend splitting this up further by putting a small amount into your emergency fund too. Say you have £3,000 in savings and you can save £400 a month, you now know it’ll take you 18 months to save up for a £10,000 wedding.
• The majority of your costs will come upfront. It might not be the full amount, but it could be 50% to secure your venue, for example, so it’s worth starting to save before you begin booking – even if it’s tempting.

2. Discuss who’s paying for what

It can be a tricky conversation, but you’ll want to have the money chat with your parents early on. It’s no longer expected that the bride’s family will pay for the wedding, but it’s worth seeing if either set of parents will help you financially or pay for a specific cost, such as the dress.

We’ve got more on how to ask your parents for a wedding contribution as well as a breakdown of the rules and etiquette of who pays for what (including the best ways to gift money to avoid inheritance tax).

Don’t forget to let them know how grateful you are for their generosity – a little thank you goes a long way during the stressful planning process!

3. Sort the guest list

The size of your guest list will determine roughly how much you need to be aiming to save.

If it’s 20-50 people, you can look for smaller venues that offer an intimate space at a cheaper price e.g. a private room in a pub or restaurant. Most venues easily cater to guest lists of 50-100, so do some research to find out how much venues in your area charge and what the cost per head for catering might be.

Often guide prices will be listed on websites if you don’t want to make contact just yet, or chat to married friends to see what they paid. If you want around 80 guests on an all-inclusive wedding package of £90pp, you can use that £7,200 as the starting point for a rough budget.

For weddings of 150 guests or above, you’ll need a larger venue and will need to accept this will cost you more – not that there aren’t smart ways to save, of course, such as choosing to have a midweek wedding, going for dry hire, or not hiring a venue exclusively.

Should you realise that you can’t afford to pay for all those guests, you either need to 1) give yourself more time to save, or 2) cut down your guest list to a more realistic figure.

4. Set aside some of your wedding budget

Once you’ve worked out how much you can save, whether you’ll have any financial help from family, and how far your money will stretch, you have a rough budget.

Little costs are going to pop up when you least expect them, so you always need to have a contingency fund that you don’t touch. Set aside around 10% of your budget and pretend it doesn’t exist. If you have a £30,000 budget, this means you’ll approach your planning with a reduced budget of £25,500 to £27,000 in your head.

You’ll want around £500 spare for the wedding day too: just in case you need emergency taxis, a replacement bridesmaid dress, and for the food and celebratory drink you need to provide for your wedding party on the day. Don’t use it? That’s £500 for your honeymoon!

5. Block out your biggest costs

As per our budget breakdown, note that your venue hire fee will inevitably be your biggest cost. We'd always advise that you take your budget and cut it in half – this amount should cover your wedding venue hire, plus your food and drink charges. If your overall budget is £25,500, you’ll have £12,750 for your venue, food and drink.

• Knowing this, you can find out quotes for hire and cost per head from the venues you’re interested in and see whether they fit in your budget.
• Be aware that not every venue will offer the same kind of package. For a tipi wedding, you may find the cost of toilets, a dance floor, a catering tent with an extra power supply and furniture will all need to be considered separately. A hotel wedding is more likely to cover most of your venue and catering costs, but you may find it’s extra for cake cutting and a cheese tower, for example. Find out all the associated costs upfront and adjust your budget accordingly.
• Enquire about every cost with your suppliers so you’re not caught out by any hidden wedding costs. This includes VAT, delivery, service and corkage.

6. Decide your priorities

The remaining half of your budget is for everything else, including outfits for you and your wedding party, the wedding rings, stationery, flowers and décor. Here’s how to do it:

• Draw up a list of non-negotiables. An open bar? Fancy invitations? Live music for the evening reception? It can be anything from having a Rolls Royce to drive you to the ceremony to only having a summer wedding on a Saturday. If you can’t imagine marrying without this thing, you need to be prioritising the budget for it and looking elsewhere to save.
• However, be sensible about non-negotiables: pick two or three otherwise you really will have no budget left. This means you can’t keep going over £500 here and there. An extra £500 for the outfit of your dreams needs to be cut somewhere else.
• It’s helpful to make another list of things you really aren’t that fussed about e.g. centrepieces, a massive cake, expensive wedding rings. It’ll help you see when you start tracking your budget if you’re spending more than you need in this area.
• Book your priority vendors first so you can continually adjust how much you have to spend in other areas as you proceed.

How to Stick to Your Wedding Budget

Tracking your budget is the only fail-safe way of making sure you don’t go over it. Boring, but true. A great way to do this is to track your spend with a wedding budget spreadsheet. These can be easy to create using free services like Google Sheets and inputting the formulas you need to adjust your spends – but if that sounds like hard work, we’ve got a great wedding budget tool right here for you!

• Download the Hitched app – it's free!
• Enter your predicted budget and the app will estimate how much you should allocate for each supplier. You can add or remove anything from your budget and create new categories as needed.
• You'll then be able to monitor and track your costs and get a breakdown of your wedding spending. 
• Better yet, you can watch your pending payments, so you don't miss anything important! The last thing you want is to be paying a penalty fee for late payments, right?

What are the biggest hidden wedding costs?

Most suppliers are upfront and honest about all the costs involved in hiring them for your wedding day, but here are a few things you might forget to budget for (it’s easily done!)

• Wedding insurance
• Marriage licence/registrar fees
• Corkage 
• Wedding party gifts
• Hen or stag party costs
• Extra reception décor, like lighting hire
• Honeymoon wardrobe
• Stamps for your invites
• More than one hair and makeup trial
• Clean-up costs
• Outfit alterations
• Hotel room the night before the wedding
• Unexpected guests
• Post-wedding extras: thank you cards, preserving your wedding dress or bouquet

Discover the wedding costs couples forget here.