Everyone wants a single number, and the honest answer is that "average" is almost useless for your wedding — averages blend a 120-guest garden ceremony with a 700-guest five-day affair, so the figure describes no real couple. A far more useful question is "what drives my number?"
The three big levers. Guest count multiplies almost everything — catering, seating, hospitality, scale of décor — so it is the single strongest dial you control. Number of functions is the second: each event is effectively a mini-wedding with its own setup. Location is the third — a home-city wedding, a destination, and an out-of-season date behave very differently.
The stable ratios. Across weddings since 2019 we have seen catering and venue dominate the spend, with décor, photography and hospitality forming the next tier. Those proportions hold even as the total moves.
We have gathered our real, first-hand observations into an honest 2026 cost report rather than repeat a headline figure here — it shows how the levers move money, so you can model your own wedding instead of someone else's average.
Tell us your rough guest count and number of functions, and we can sketch a realistic shape with you.
