The beginning of the wedding planning journey can be completely overwhelming. While many people have been thinking about what their dream wedding will look like for a long time, most haven’t given much thought to the details of how to make that happen – especially the dreaded budget!
Knowing how big to set your budget goal may be really difficult when you start thinking about guest lists, venues and photographers – especially if you’ve never had to do any of this before.
As a general rule you can set your wedding budget with this calculation: multiply your annual post-tax salary by 40%. This gives a figure based on 20% monthly savings for 2 years from your engagement until getting married. You can then add on top any financial help you receive from family.
Using this calculation, a couple both earning around-average salary in the United States (annual take home pay of $40,000 each, $80,000 combined) could save $32,000 for their wedding in 2 years by saving 20 percent of their salary towards their wedding budget each month.
This figure is right in line with the reported average cost of a wedding in the United States which is $26,000.
From here you can adjust the calculation as you need. Want to get married in one year instead of two? Multiply your salary by 20 percent instead of 40 percent.
Is 10 percent savings the most you can manage per month with your current financial commitments? Then, multiply 10 percent by the number of years you can save before getting married (10% x 2 years = 20% of salary, 10% x 3 years saving = 30% of salary). You get the idea!
The goal here is to first understand how much you can manage to set aside from now until the time you’ll be getting married, BEFORE you start thinking about what you want to spend the money on.
What Percentage of Couples Pay for Their Own Wedding?
It can be helpful to know how other couples manage their wedding budget when you are first beginning to plan; particularly if you are wondering if (or how much) parents should pay towards a wedding.
Twenty-seven percent of couples paid for their own wedding costs, and up to seventy percent of couples had either some or total financial support, according to Brides annual survey. The numbers do fluctuate, and the decision as to who will pay for what will be based on each family’s situation.
Traditions around marriage and wedding ceremonies have changed dramatically, even during the last 50 years. Where it was once tradition in most western societies for a bride’s parents to pay for a modest wedding and reception for their daughter (and her male fiancé), lifestyles have changed significantly.
Couples are now more likely to be older and to have worked full time careers for longer, and thereby have their own funds to contribute to the cost of their wedding.
In recent years wedding costs have also been increasing, so it could be that what a couple’s parents had set aside and planned to contribute may not stretch so far now.
Also, with same-sex marriage now (finally!) becoming legal around the world, gender-based expectations around wedding budgets and other wedding traditions no longer apply to many couples.
Some couples now plan to cover the majority of the wedding costs themselves, and have family assistance to pay only for certain parts of the total expenses, for example the cost of a bride’s wedding dress, or just the flowers, or the food costs or catering.
While it can be really helpful to have financial support from family, if you don’t have that support it’s still possible to have a beautiful, memorable wedding, without using any debt!
What if my Wedding Budget is Less Than I Hoped?
Finding out there’s a gap between what you hoped you could spend on your wedding and what you can actually manage in the time you have to save can be really upsetting.
We wrote about how to deal with this situation in another post, please take a look here: What to do if I can’t afford my dream wedding?
It’s important to deal with the disappointment first of all, so that you can move past it and enjoy your wedding planning process. You need to make sure not to hold on to the negative feelings as you plan your big day.
Other practical things you can do are to re-prioritize your wedding wish list to make sure you’re focusing on what is important to you and your future spouse, or to look outside your savings plan for other sources of income.
We take a closer look at these practical steps in our post: 5 Simple Steps to Decide Your Wedding Budget – Debt Free!
Many couples will consider taking on some debt to pay for their wedding, but at Dream Wedding On A Budget we will NEVER recommend doing this. A loan for wedding expenses is definitely bad debt, and can eventually cost you thousands more than your original budget once you finally pay it off.
How Many Guests is Considered a Large Wedding?
It’s a good idea to discuss early on with your future spouse how big a wedding you have in mind. Different families can have wildly different traditions so it’s important to be on the same page about the size of a guest list from the very beginning.
Generally a guest list over 150 people is considered a large wedding. 50-150 people is considered a medium size wedding, and under 50 people is considered a small wedding. Since the Covid-19 outbreak, there has been a rise in very small “Micro Weddings” with 20 people or less.
The number of guests you have will have the biggest impact on how you split your wedding budget, so it can really help to decide on this question early on in your wedding planning process.
How Much Does a Small Wedding Cost?
Having a small wedding is a great way to focus on what really matters, that you and your future spouse can celebrate your commitment to each other. With so many other financial responsibilities – such as mortgages or raising children – it doesn’t always make sense to spend many thousands of dollars on only one day of your whole life.
You can plan a fantastic small wedding for $5,000, or even less. The key to achieving this is to decide on one important item to focus your budget on, and reduce or even cut out completely the other unnecessary items.
Try not to spread the budget thinly across too many areas, or it can begin to feel like a ‘cheap’ event.
We show you how to do this in our post “How to Plan a Wedding Under $5,000”, we also provide free budget planning spreadsheets for each focus area (ie Large Guest List, Deluxe Photography etc). Click here to read more.
Where Should I Start With Planning My Wedding?
Usually you will have some time before the planned date, so take your time to think about what will make your big day special for you and your future spouse.
Wedding budget, wedding date and guest list size are the first three topics you should discuss with your future spouse after you get engaged. You may not agree on the answers straight away, but it’s important to start the conversation to see where there are any differences in opinion that will need time to work out.
Start with the big picture items: budget, date and guest list to get a general idea of how you both see the day before moving on to details such as location, venue, food and dress.
Other items such as specific vendors, flowers and cake can come later on in your planning process.
There are a huge number of tools available to help with your planning process. Printable planners and online tools encompass vast detail to make sure you won’t miss anything important.
I hope you’ve found our tips useful. You’ve now done the hard part by figuring out how much you can spend on your wedding. Click here to download our Free Salary Wedding Budget Calculator
Now it’s time to take a deep breath and start planning!
What is YOUR biggest question about planning your wedding? Leave us a comment below!
