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Wedding Cost GeneratorFree · No sign-up required

Instant Wedding Budget &
Vendor ➔ Bride Matching

Your free wedding budget planner. Set your city, your guest count and your style, and see what your wedding really costs from real local vendor prices — then use our exclusive Vendor → Bride Matching App and let local vendors compete for your business.

Plan smarter. Spend happier.

Type a city or a zip code. Every price below is what vendors actually charge in that market, and it's the vendors there who'll compete for your business.

Budget Inputs

Live

Set your guests, city, and style — real local prices update instantly.

$55,000
$5,000$100,000
Estimated real cost$49,400
Within your budget$5,600 to spare
120
10300

Changes category names and seeds a typical budget for your vibe.

Estimated cost per guest$412

Cost Breakdown

$49,400 est.typically $41,990–$61,750$5,600 under budget

Tap a category to add or remove it — your total reflects the 11 services you actually need.

Use the slider to add Mom & Bridal Party up to 16 @ $200/each.

Contingency Buffer

Tips for your other vendors (DJ, photographer, hair, driver), day-of overages & surprises. Catering's service charge is already in the numbers above, so this stays a lean ~5%.

$2,470 est.

Enter your city above to localize every line to your real market. Figures scale with your guest count and bridal party. Real weddings vary widely by vendor, season, and quality tier, so treat this as a planning guide, not a quote.

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★ Exclusive ★
Vendor → Bride Matching App

Tell us what you need and our exclusive Vendor Matching App connects you with pre-screened local wedding vendors who fit your style, budget, and guest count — completely free.

1

Select your vendors

2

Enter your info

3

Vendors reach out within 24hrs

We've pre-selected vendors to match the services you kept in your budget above. Add or remove any, and we'll match you with local vendors who compete for your business.

We use this to automatically expire your profile after your wedding day — so vendors stop contacting you once you're married. Don't have a date yet? Pick an approximate month and year.

Vendors see only your wedding style, budget range, and guest count — your contact info stays private until they unlock the lead.

Most popular upgrade

Download Your Full Localized Budget Plan

Turn this estimate into a print-ready PDF: every service you picked, priced line by line at real local prices for the city you chose, with per-guest math and a blank column to fill in what you actually pay.

  • Every service you chose, itemized
  • Real local prices, not averages
  • A column to fill in your real quotes
  • Instant download
$19$39

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Frequently Asked Questions

Everything couples ask before they start budgeting.

Most U.S. couples spend between $30,000 and $40,000 on their wedding, though the figure swings dramatically by region. Our generator starts from a national baseline and applies a city-level regional index — derived from local venue costs — so the estimate reflects your actual market instead of a one-size-fits-all average.

Cost per guest is simply your region-adjusted total budget divided by your guest count. Catering and venue minimums make this one of the most useful planning numbers: trimming the guest list is almost always the fastest way to lower the bottom line, since roughly two-thirds of a typical budget scales directly with headcount.

Wedding pricing is intensely local. A florist, photographer, or reception venue in Manhattan or San Francisco can cost two to three times the same service in a smaller metro. When you select a city, we apply that market's regional index to every one of the 22 categories so the breakdown stays realistic wherever you're planning.

The $19 Full Localized Budget Plan is a print-ready PDF with every service you picked priced line by line, real local prices for the city you chose, per-guest math, and a blank column to fill in what you actually end up paying. It's built to take to vendor meetings.

Start with the two numbers that drive everything else: your total spending ceiling and your guest count. Set a realistic ceiling first — what you can comfortably contribute plus any family commitments — then enter it above and localize it to your city so the figure reflects your actual market. From there, work top-down: venue and catering together typically claim around 60% of a budget, so lock those two before committing to anything else. Allocate the remaining categories by priority, not habit — fund the two or three things you'll remember most (photography, music, food) generously, and trim the line items that won't change how the day feels. Finally, hold back a contingency buffer for tips, overages, and the inevitable surprises. Our generator does this allocation for you instantly: enter your ceiling, set your guest count, and you'll see all 22 categories distributed in the proportions real couples actually spend.

Your savings target is your region-adjusted total plus a buffer — not the national average you read in headlines. Begin with the breakdown above for your city, then back into a monthly savings number: divide the total by the months until your date, and subtract any contributions from family. Two details couples routinely underestimate are the deposits and the timeline — most vendors require 25%–50% up front to hold a date, with the balance due in the final 30 to 60 days, so your cash needs to be available on the vendors' schedule, not just by the wedding day. We recommend saving 5%–10% beyond your headline budget specifically for tips, vendor gratuities, day-of overages, and last-minute additions. Set your numbers above to see your realistic, location-accurate target, then divide by your runway to get a monthly figure you can actually plan around.

Affordability is entirely local, which is exactly what this tool is built to answer. Enter your city above and we apply that market's regional index — derived from local venue costs — to every category, so you see what a wedding genuinely costs where you're planning rather than a generic average. If the localized total sits above what you can save, you have three reliable levers: trim the guest list (roughly two-thirds of the budget scales directly with headcount, so this moves the number fastest), shift to an off-peak date or a Friday/Sunday for materially lower venue pricing, or consider a nearby metro with a lower regional index. Adjust the location and guest sliders above to test each scenario in real time — within a minute you'll know whether your target city fits your budget or whether a small change makes it work.

The most affordable markets are the ones with a regional index below 1.00× — smaller and mid-sized metros where venue, catering, and vendor costs run well under what you'd pay in Manhattan, San Francisco, or Los Angeles, often for comparable or better settings. Affordability rarely means compromising on beauty: secondary cities, scenic small towns, and emerging wedding destinations frequently deliver stunning venues at a fraction of major-metro pricing. The smartest move is to compare directly — type a few candidate cities into the location search above and watch the index and full breakdown update for each. A metro with a 0.80× index can put roughly 20% back in your pocket versus the national baseline, money you can redirect toward the photography, food, or experience that matters most to you.