How to budget for a wedding

The average wedding budget in the UK is around £30,000. If that sounds like a scary number, don’t worry. You can easily plan a wedding on a much smaller budget, particularly if you do some careful planning.

Before you start contacting venues and suppliers, try to come up with a rough figure of how much you want to spend. You should also think about how many guests you want to invite, and what kind of venue you’d like to book.

Make sure you factor in every cost – no matter how small – and, most importantly, be realistic about what you can afford.

The biggest expense of your wedding could well be the venue. Renting a dedicated space for the day could take up a good chunk of your budget. Some other costs to think about include:

The important thing is to decide on your essentials. Do you want lots of fresh flowers? Are you keen on having live music all night long? Do you prefer champagne to prosecco? Whatever your preferences, making a list of your must-haves will let you prioritise your spending.

With that bit done, you can research venues and suppliers, and create a detailed budget.

Start by visiting a handful of venues and talking about hire costs. Some will offer package deals, where you get the venue hire, food and drink for one all-inclusive fee.

Other venues will simply charge for the space, which means you’ll have to hire your own caterers, and possibly even rent your own tables, chairs, cutlery and crockery.

Once you’ve chosen your venue (but before you’ve made a booking) you can start creating your detailed budget: a document that lists every single cost associated with your big day.

Start by subtracting your venue hire from your budget, and then split the remaining money, prioritising anything that’s especially important to you and your partner. Using a spreadsheet will be handy here.

If your budget doesn’t look like it will stretch, start looking for places to cut costs.

You could save a lot of money by editing your guest list. It’s not always easy to cut back on guests, but a good place to start is limiting plus-ones.

You could also save money by switching the date of your wedding. Aim to have it in the low season (November-April), and avoid the weekend. This should save you money on your venue, as well as on suppliers such as caterers, photographers and musicians.

Other money-saving tips include:

Applying for a wedding loan could give you a dedicated pot of cash to spend from, which means you won’t need to dip into savings or wait for your monthly wage to come in before you pay a supplier.

Just remember that taking out any kind of loan is a personal commitment, and you’ll have to be prepared to pay it back in monthly instalments, with interest.

The content on this page aims to offer an informative introduction to the subject matter but does not constitute expert financial advice specific to your own situation. All facts and figures were correct at time of publication and were compiled using a range of sources.