Fees and paperwork
Giving notice at the register office, the registrar's attendance, certificates, plus a religious or celebrant-led ceremony.
Free tool
Work out your wedding budget: guest count in, total out
Most budgets do not come apart over the total. They come apart over the question of what one more guest actually costs. This calculator answers both — with no sign-up, no email address, and without a single one of your figures leaving this browser.
No sign-up
Runs in your browser
Updates as you type
The calculator
Amount in £
Your figures
Put in your guest count and overwrite every line the moment you have a real quote. Each item has two fields: what it costs regardless of how many people come, and what each additional guest adds.
Everyone who eats and drinks — children included.
Reserve for whatever ends up dearer than the quote.
Venue and hire
Room hire, the day rate, utilities, final clean.
Total
£4,800
Catering and drinks
Food and drink, priced per head.
Total
£7,600
Photography and video
A day rate, independent of how many people come.
Total
£1,800
Stationery
Save the date, invitation, menus and place cards, postage.
Total
£790
Rings
Wedding bands, engraving, later resizing.
Total
£1,500
Outfits
Dress and suit, shoes, hair, make-up — for both of you.
Total
£2,400
Music
DJ or band, sound and lighting, and the venue's music licence where it is not already covered.
Total
£1,300
Flowers and decor
Bouquet and buttonholes fixed, table decoration per guest.
Total
£1,560
Subtotal
£21,750
Contingency
(10 %)
£2,175
What that comes to
Total
£23,925
Per guest
£299.06
The total divided by the guest count — rings, outfits and the photographer spread across every head.
One more guest costs
£126.50
Everything that follows the guest count, plus contingency. The number a guest list can honestly be discussed against.
Guest-driven share
42 %
How much of your budget follows the list. The rest is settled before the first person accepts.
The figures filled in are rough starting points for the UK and expressly not a statistic: they come from no survey and describe no average. They are there so the calculator does not begin at zero. Replace every one of them with your first real quote — that is when an estimate becomes a budget.
The mechanics behind it
How a wedding budget splits in the UK
A wedding budget falls into two halves that behave nothing alike. One follows the guest count: food, drink, stationery, table decoration and, in the end, the size of the room you need for all of it. The other costs the same whether thirty people come or a hundred and thirty — the rings, your outfits, the photographer, the band, the fees for the ceremony itself. Throw both halves into one pot and you get a number no decision can be made from.
That is precisely where percentages fail. "Thirty percent for the venue" sounds like a rule, but it does not tell you what happens when you strike ten names off the list — and that is the question actually on the table. So this tool works with two numbers per item rather than a share: a fixed amount and an amount per guest. Out of it comes the one figure a guest list can be discussed against without an argument — what a single invitation costs.
With the starting values above, roughly half the budget follows the guest count. Ten guests fewer therefore do not save you ten percent of the total, but roughly half of that; the rest is settled before the first acceptance arrives. Read the other way round: the fixed items are the faster place to save, because one decision does it. A photographer who covers the ceremony and the hour after rather than sixteen hours is one conversation with one person. Uninviting twenty guests is twenty.
Order matters as much as arithmetic. The venue and the date pull almost everything else behind them: they fix how many people can fit at all, whether you may bring your own caterer or the house supplies it, whether your own drinks are allowed, and how late the music may play. Work a full budget before that decision and you will work it a second time afterwards.
The gaps
The items that go missing again and again
Budgets rarely break on the item that was argued over longest. They break on the many small ones that appear in nobody's quote — because they belong to nobody's quote. Put them in now with a rough number rather than three weeks out with the real one.
Tips and thank-yous
Service staff, drivers, your witnesses, everyone who worked a day for you.
Supplier travel
Mileage and an overnight stay sit in the small print, not in the package price — and they fall due for each supplier separately.
Drinks beyond the package
The reception drink, corkage on wine you bring, and the last third of the evening no package covers.
The cake
With many caterers it is not part of the menu price, and a cutting or plating charge sometimes comes on top.
Trials and alterations
Hair and make-up trials, alterations, cleaning the dress and suit afterwards.
Transport and rooms
A shuttle for guests, your own room on the night, the car for the day.
Taking it down
Final clean, stripping the decoration, returning hired glassware and furniture — usually the morning after and rarely free.
Deposits and deadlines
Not extra money, but earlier money. Miss the dates and you do not have a budget problem, you have a scheduling one.
Shown openly
How this calculator works
Every item has two fields. The per-guest amount is multiplied by your guest count, the fixed amount is added as it stands, everything is summed, the contingency is added on top and the total is divided by the guest count at the end. Nothing else happens — every line can be checked on a pocket calculator.
Your figures stay here
The sums run entirely in your browser. There is no form that gets submitted, no sign-up, no email prompt and no storage. Your entries do not leave this window and are gone the moment you close the tab — so write the result down before you click on.
Rough guides, not a statistic
The figures filled in come from no survey and claim no average. They are a starting point for the UK that you replace with your first real quote.
Common questions
Questions about the calculator
No. No account, no email address, no payment. The page calculates immediately and completely, and it does so on the twentieth visit too, without asking for anything back.
No. The whole calculation runs in your browser, nothing is sent to a server and nothing is kept. Close the tab and the entries are gone — hold on to the result if you have spent a while on the fields.
From no survey. They are rough guides for the UK so the calculator does not start at zero, and they probably do not hold for your region. The moment you have a real quote, it belongs where the guide is.
That is yours to decide; ten percent is preset. It is not room for extra wishes but for invoices that land above the quote: the final clean, overtime, the last barrel, the travel nobody thought of.
The arithmetic does, everywhere. The starting values are written for the UK and priced in pounds, so for Ireland or anywhere else the currency is the first thing that does not fit and the price level is the second. Replace them sooner rather than later — nothing about the calculation changes.
In the table it is what one guest costs on that one item. In the result it is what a guest costs on average once rings, outfits and the photographer are spread across every head. You need the first figure to negotiate and the second to place yourself.
Read on
More about the money
Three articles from the magazine that pick up where the calculator stops.
Once the total is settled, the dates are still missing. Our second tool counts backwards from your wedding date to work out when each decision has to be made: Count the timeline backwards
The number turns into a guest list
Once the total stands, everything after it hangs on the list: who is invited, who accepts, who is actually at the table in the end. That is exactly where you can carry on — with a wedding website your guests answer on themselves.
Create a wedding website for freeCreating and designing it costs nothing. Sending the invitations and collecting the replies belongs to a package.