Just under a third of a wedding budget follows the headcount. That is the number that decides what you can afford, and almost nobody works it out.
Type in the total you can actually spend and how many people you want there. The split below is a starting point you can move around; the number worth staring at is the one underneath it.
| Category | Share | Budget | Scales with guests? |
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Simplified on purpose. The split is a common starting point, not a rule — a garden marquee shifts money into rentals, a restaurant wedding into catering, and a photographer you love can be worth breaking the whole thing for. Honeymoon is left out because most couples budget it separately. What the page does honestly is the arithmetic: which costs follow the guest count and which do not. The full spreadsheet lets you set your own categories, track estimated against actual, and see deposits paid and balances still owed.
The guest list, and it is not close. Just under a third of a typical budget follows the headcount - catering, drinks, cake, stationery, favours - so every guest you remove takes that share with them. Cutting the photographer saves once; cutting ten guests saves ten times the per-head cost and nobody notices the difference in the room.
No. They are a starting split to argue with. A marquee in a field moves money into rentals and away from venue hire; a restaurant wedding does the opposite. Use the split to see the shape of the budget, then move it to fit the wedding you actually want.
Because most couples budget it separately, often from a different pot or from gift money, and including it makes the wedding-day numbers look smaller than they are. Add it as its own line if you pay for both from one account.
It gets you the shape and the per-guest number in about a minute. It does not track what you have actually paid, which vendors are booked, what deposits have gone out or what is still owed - and those are what stop a wedding budget drifting. That is what the full spreadsheet is for.
The calculator above is deliberately simple. The full spreadsheet does the whole job — your own categories, estimated against actual, every vendor with deposits paid and balances still owed, and the guest list beside it. It opens in Excel and works just as well in free Google Sheets.
Get the full Wedding Planner spreadsheet Or start with our free Mini Budget Tracker