A Realistic UK Wedding Budget Breakdown

I'm not going to give you one national average figure, because it's close to meaningless - a barn wedding for 60 in the Midlands and a marquee wedding for 150 in the Cotswolds are different projects wearing the same word. What's more useful is the shape of where the money goes, and which categories people consistently get wrong.

Where it tends to go, roughly in order of size:

• Venue and catering - almost always the single biggest line, often 40–50% of the total once you include food, drink, and any mandatory venue extras (some venues quietly require you to use their in-house caterer, which removes your ability to shop around).
• Photography and videography - the thing people regret underspending on more than almost anything else, because it's the one vendor whose work you're still looking at in twenty years.
• Dress and attire - see the Dress & Attire section for the real breakdown of made-to-measure versus alterations versus off-the-peg, since this is where costs vary wildly depending on route.
• Flowers, styling, and stationery - easy to let scope-creep here without noticing, because each individual decision feels small.
• Everything else - hen do contributions, favours, transport, hair and makeup trials, the marriage notice/certificate fees themselves. Individually small, collectively not.

The categories people underbudget:

1. VAT and service charges that aren't in the headline venue quote - always ask whether a quote is inclusive.
2. Alterations, which are very rarely included in a dress's sticker price and can add a meaningful sum, especially for anything structured or beaded.
3. A contingency. Something will change - a guest count shift, a supplier price increase, a decision you reverse. Ten to fifteen percent held back isn't pessimism, it's just planning.

The honest recommendation: set your total budget first, allocate roughly using the above, then track actual spend against it from the day you book your venue - not from three months before, by which point you've already committed most of the money without a clear picture of where it went.