Cover & Money
Where the money really goes: real UK budgets
Published “average wedding cost” figures circulate every January and are worth very little to anybody setting their own budget. They mix a register office ceremony with a marquee weekend, they rarely state what is inside the number, and they anchor expectations without informing them.
This page takes the other approach. Every figure below is a price a named supplier or public body publishes on its own site, captured on one day, so the shape of a budget can be built from things that are actually true rather than from an average of things that are not.
How a wedding budget is actually shaped
Three properties, and they explain most of what goes wrong.
It is dominated by per-head costs. Catering, drink, hire, cake and stationery all scale with the guest list, which is why the guest count is the only lever that moves everything at once. The venue is frequently the largest single line and the guest-driven lines are collectively larger.
Its fixed costs do not care how many guests there are. Photography, music, the ceremony, the dress and the rings cost roughly the same for sixty guests as for a hundred and forty. That is why small weddings are more expensive per head and large ones are cheaper per head, on identical everything.
It is paid in deposits, long before it is spent. The budget is committed months before the invoices land, so a plan that tracks payments made rather than commitments entered looks healthy right up to the final quarter.
The lines that reliably overrun
Consistently, and for structural reasons rather than carelessness.
Guest numbers. They drift upwards through the process, and every addition multiplies through catering, drink, hire, cake and stationery at once.
Drink. It is the only line that can still be overspent while the wedding is happening, which is why an uncapped bar tab is the classic budget failure.
The lines that are not on the list. Supplier meals, cake cutting charges, corkage, evening food, postage, alterations, transport for the couple’s family, and the second and third dress fittings. Individually small and collectively substantial.
Anything decided late. Late decisions are made under time pressure with fewer options, and time pressure has a price attached in every trade.
The approach by budget
Fix the guest count first, then everything else
On a tight budget the guest list is the budget. Setting it first, and holding it, converts an open-ended problem into a bounded one, and every per-head price below then multiplies out to a number you can check.
The statutory floor is genuinely low. A register office statutory ceremony is published at £62, notice at £46.50 per person, and a copy certificate at £12.50, so the legal part of getting married costs well under two hundred pounds.
Everything above that floor is a choice, and the pages across this site show what each choice costs at published prices.
The statutory fees, from the official sources
The legal side is set by public bodies and published openly, which makes it the one part of a wedding budget that can be known exactly in advance.
Check the statutory positionBuild it from published prices, not from a percentage split
Percentage splits, forty per cent on the venue and so on, describe other people’s weddings. A budget built from real published prices for the things you actually want is both more accurate and more useful, because each line can be checked.
Work in three passes. First, the fixed lines: ceremony, rings, attire, photography, music. Second, the per-head lines at your guest count. Third, the lines nobody lists, which is where the contingency goes.
Then add ten per cent and do not spend it. It is not a buffer for a nicer version of something, it is what absorbs the lines discovered in the final quarter.
Track commitments, not payments
At a larger spend the danger is not affordability, it is visibility. Contracts signed across eighteen months, each with its own schedule, produce a payment profile nobody has ever seen in one place.
Keep one document showing, per supplier, the contracted total, the amount paid, the amount outstanding and the date it falls due. That single sheet is worth more than any budgeting method, and almost nobody builds it.
Where the spend stops paying is on upgrades chosen late. A generous budget spent in the final two months buys the same things at short-notice prices, and the difference is money for nothing.
What actually makes the difference
- The guest count. It is the multiplier on every per-head line and the only lever that moves them all together.
- Tracking commitments rather than payments. A signed contract is a liability whether or not the invoice has arrived.
- One shared document. Two versions of the budget is the most common failure and it is always found late.
- A real ten per cent contingency. Untouched, and reserved for the lines nobody lists.
- Deciding early. Late decisions cost more in every trade, for the same thing.
Common mistakes
Starting from an average
A published average is easy to find and describes a mixture of weddings that resembles nobody’s, so it anchors the budget without informing it.
Instead: build from published prices for the specific things you want, at your guest count.
Setting the guest list after the budget
The list feels like the human part and the budget the administrative one, so the list is written first and costed later.
Instead: settle a number first, then decide who fills it, which is a kinder conversation than cutting later.
Counting only what has been paid
Payments are visible in a bank account and commitments are not, so the budget looks comfortable until the final quarter.
Instead: record the contracted total for every supplier the day the contract is signed.
Spending the contingency early
It is available and something desirable comes up, so it becomes part of the budget rather than a reserve against it.
Instead: keep it in a separate account and treat it as untouchable until the final month.
Leaving VAT out of the comparison
Suppliers publish inclusively and exclusively without a standard, so a budget assembled from mixed sources is out by up to a fifth.
Instead: record every figure with its VAT position stated, and total on one basis.
Published prices, from across this site
Every figure below is published by the named supplier or public body on its own page and was captured for one of the hubs on this site. Together they show the shape of a budget without an average anywhere in it.
| What it buys | Published price | Source | Captured |
|---|---|---|---|
| Notice of marriage, England and Wales, per person | £46.50 | RBKC statutory fee schedule, London | 11 Aug 2026 |
| Register office statutory ceremony, England and Wales | £62.00 | GOV.UK, National (UK-wide) | 11 Aug 2026 |
| Copy marriage certificate | £12.50 | GOV.UK, General Register Office, National (UK-wide) | 11 Aug 2026 |
| Sit-down meal, 49 to 70 guests, per head | £34.00 plus VAT | Wokingham Town Council, South East England | 13 Aug 2026 |
| Cold fork buffet, 49 to 70 guests, per head | £30.00 plus VAT | Coasty Catering, South West England | 13 Aug 2026 |
| Fully catered hog roast, up to 100 guests | from £890 | Hot Hog Roast, North West England | 13 Aug 2026 |
| Corkage, per bottle | £10.00 | Fylde Borough Council, North West England | 13 Aug 2026 |
| Solitaire engagement ring, 0.30ct D VS2, yellow gold and platinum | £1,550.00 | Lunn’s, Northern Ireland | 13 Aug 2026 |
| 9ct gold 4mm wedding ring | £820.00 | Clogau, Wales | 13 Aug 2026 |
| 10m x 18m clearspan marquee | £1,795.00 | Rent A Tent NI, Northern Ireland | 13 Aug 2026 |
| 2+1 luxury toilet trailer hire | from £625.00 plus VAT | Wight Event Toilets, South West England | 13 Aug 2026 |
| 20kVA generator, weekend, including 20 hours run time and cabling | £645 | Grizzly Bear Events, South East England | 13 Aug 2026 |
| Wedding insurance, entry premium, one-off | from £25.40 | WeddingPlan Insurance, National (UK-wide) | 13 Aug 2026 |
Every figure above is a price the supplier publishes openly on its own website, captured on the date shown. Published prices change, they often exclude VAT, delivery and setup, and they are not a quote. Treat them as a guide to the shape of the market, then confirm anything you are relying on directly with the supplier.
Sample: 13 sources across Northern Ireland, Wales, South East England, South West England, North West England, London and three UK-wide bodies, captured August 2026.
Read down that table and the structure of a wedding budget is visible without a single average. The legal minimum is under two hundred pounds. One catering decision at seventy guests is over two thousand. And the marquee, lavatories and power alone, before food, reach three thousand.
The lesson is not that weddings are expensive. It is that the total is built from a small number of large decisions, each of which can be checked against a published price, and that a budget assembled that way is one you can actually hold.