Start from your total — or from your guest list — split it the way real weddings actually spend it, break every quote down line by line, then track what's quoted, paid and still owed. No account, no spreadsheet.
The Knot 2026 Real Weddings Study — 10,474 US couples married in 2025. Averages are a starting point, never a price promise.
The standalone-calculator way: guests × average cost per guest, adjusted for where you're marrying (set your region on the right). Fixed costs like photography don't really scale with guests — catering, drinks, rentals, stationery and favors do — so treat this as a ballpark to start from.
Boosting adds about 4 points of your budget to each priority and takes it from the rest — every dollar added somewhere comes out of somewhere else.
The Knot's headline average leaves rings, the rehearsal dinner and the honeymoon out — most couples pay for them from the same pot, so here you choose. If the money comes from the same savings, include it.
When on, catering, cake, rentals, stationery and favors reprice as your guest list changes; fixed costs stay put.
Drag a slider or type an exact quote. Lock a category once you have a real price so nothing overwrites it. Not having something? Skip it — its money goes back in the pot. Open Break it down to split a quote into the line items couples usually forget: postage, alterations, trials, vendor meals, the marriage licence, cake-cutting and corkage fees.
Take it with you — download it, copy it, or email it to yourselves and your partner.
The maths every planner uses: (budget − what's already covered) ÷ months left to save it in.
Fixed costs (photography, attire, the officiant) stay flat; per-guest costs scale — the same fixed-vs-variable split Zola's Cost Index models.
One place for every real number, so a stale mental total never fools you into thinking you're on track. For each vendor: the contract price, what you've actually paid so far, what's still owed, and when the balance falls due. Deposits are small and scattered — balances bunch up in the final weeks, so the due-date view below is the one to watch.
Thirty years of weddings taught me where the fat hides. A few that apply to your numbers:
Every guest you add costs more than a plate of food.
Hold back a little for the surprises — there are always surprises.
A Friday or Sunday wedding is the classic big saving — venues and caterers price peak Saturdays hardest, and off-peak or weekday dates are where the discounts live. Your guests will still dance.
Every benchmark on this page is labelled with its source. Averages blend thousands of very different weddings, and a percentage split is a planning guide — not a promise that flowers cost exactly that in your town. Always pair an average with real quotes.