A wedding budget only becomes useful once the total is split into lines, because a total cannot tell you whether a florist's quote is reasonable and a line can. The shares below are the ones most weddings settle into, expressed as a percentage of the total, so they scale. A forty-thousand wedding and a hundred-and-forty-thousand wedding are surprisingly similar in proportion; what changes is the absolute size of every line together, not the balance between them.
Treat them as starting points. Your own version will move, and the point of the breakdown is to see where it moved and decide whether you meant it.
The usual shares of the total
Venue, food and drink · 40 to 50 percent
The largest line by a distance, and the one that scales with the guest count. If the venue includes catering, this is a single number. If not, the venue is usually a third of it and the caterer two thirds.
Photography and film · 10 to 15 percent
The line most often underfunded and most often regretted. Film adds roughly half again on top of photography.
Flowers and decor · 8 to 12 percent
Highly elastic. One statement arrangement and bare tables sit at the bottom of the range; flowers on every surface push past the top.
Music and entertainment · 5 to 10 percent
A DJ at the low end, a live band at the top, plus ceremony musicians if you want them.
Attire, hair and makeup · 6 to 10 percent
The dress, alterations, the suit, shoes, accessories, and the trial plus the day for hair and makeup.
Planner or coordinator · 5 to 12 percent
A full planner at the top of the range, a day-of coordinator at the bottom. Often the line that saves its own cost elsewhere.
Stationery · 2 to 3 percent
Invitations, menus, signage, thank-you cards. Digital invitations bring this to near zero.
Cake · 1 to 2 percent
A display cake and a kitchen sheet cake serve the same room for a third of a five-tier cake.
Rings · 2 to 3 percent
Sometimes budgeted separately; include them if the money comes from the same place.
Transport · 1 to 2 percent
For the couple and, if guests are being moved, for the guests.
Favours, gifts and extras · 1 to 3 percent
Gifts for the wedding party and parents, welcome bags, favours if you must.
Contingency · 5 to 10 percent
The line that is always needed and almost never budgeted. Overtime, an extra table, the tent when the forecast turns.
The three lines couples forget
Add them before you start
Service charge and tax on the catering
Twenty percent or more on the largest line. Ask whether the quote includes it and read the contract twice.
Alterations
Rarely under a few hundred, often more than the shoes, never in the dress price.
The night before and the morning after
Rehearsal dinner, the getting-ready room, breakfast for the wedding party. Small individually, a real line together.
Move money towards what guests feel and what you keep. Food, drink, the photographs. Move it away from what is looked at once and gone by Sunday.
How to use the breakdown
Multiply your total by each share to get a starting line. Then move money on purpose: if photographs matter most, take the photography line to fifteen percent and pull the flowers down to eight. What you should not do is let a line grow because a quote arrived. A quote above the line is a conversation about the line, not a reason to raise it. UNSTAGED's budget tool tracks each category against the total in real time and shows the split as it changes, which is the fastest way to see when a wedding has quietly become a different wedding.
If you want this breakdown to hold your own numbers, the budget in UNSTAGED keeps your quotes, your payments and what is left in one place.
The split is the plan. The total is just the size of it.
— The UNSTAGED Studio
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