A wedding on €5,000 to €30,000: six budgets worked through

How much wedding do you get for your money? A total on its own can’t answer that. Only a total plus a guest count can. So this post works through six budgets, each with a guest count that suits it.

The short version: a budget without a guest count tells you nothing. With smaller budgets, roughly half goes to items that cost the same however many people are watching: rings, outfits, photography. What’s left gets divided by the guests. That’s why going from €5,000 to €10,000 doesn’t buy a better wedding, it buys a bigger one. And €25,000 for 100 guests is exactly as much per head as €20,000 for 80.

One thing up front: these splits are worked examples, not a statement about what the services actually cost. Prices differ by region, supplier, what’s included and what you want. Real price ranges per item are in our post on wedding costs in Germany. To work out your own split, there’s the wedding budget calculator.

All six budgets at a glance

The guest count moves deliberately with the budget. What changes between 30, 50 and 100 guests regardless of budget is in what a wedding for 30, 50 or 100 guests costs.

€5,000 for 25 guests: the guest count is the ceiling

At €5,000 it isn’t your taste that decides what’s feasible, it’s the arithmetic. At 25 guests there’s around €90 a head for the celebration, which works well for an evening at a restaurant. At 50 guests it would be €45.

• The ceremony is at the registry office. A celebrant costs more than flowers, cake and stationery combined. At this level it would be the first decision that pushes something else out.
• A three percent buffer is too thin. Ten percent would be €500, and that would visibly go missing elsewhere. If you want breathing room, lower the guest count further.
• Photography is the second-largest item. Four hours of coverage is the minimum you can’t make up for later.

What doesn’t fit: a celebrant, video, a live band, a Saturday at a sought-after venue, and drinks packages for a long evening. Each of these costs roughly as much as three to five other lines of the table combined.

€10,000 for 50 guests: twice the size, not better

Per guest the figure stays at around €90, same as the level below; there are just twice as many people. What’s added is a DJ, proper photo coverage and some room in the buffer. Plan €10,000 for 25 guests instead of 50 and you get a noticeably more upscale wedding.

• There’s no line for the ceremony. Registry office fees sit under “other”. A celebrant would have to be paid for out of decoration or photography.
• Photography at 13 percent is slightly above the rule of thumb of 8 to 12 percent. That’s fine as long as another line stays below, here decoration and stationery.
• Hair and make-up are separate from outfits. Together they’re 12 percent, within the usual range. They’re split because the dress is paid months earlier, hair and make-up only on the morning itself.

€15,000 for 60 guests: the first real room to manoeuvre

€15,000 is where a lot of German weddings actually land. What’s interesting is less the total than what becomes possible here for the first time without anything else having to give:

The buffer now genuinely absorbs an alteration to the dress, a few extra DJ hours and a couple who RSVP late. And guests notice the extra twenty euros a head: one more course, better drinks, a longer party.

€20,000 for 80 guests: more guests or more extras

Here, for the first time, comes a question nobody faces at the smaller levels: invite more people, or spend more on the same people?

There’s no wrong answer, but there is an unconscious one. The most common mistake at this level is a list that starts at 70 and ends at 95 because individual yeses come easily. The €118 a head then becomes €99. Fix the number before you request quotes.

Video is the first line that isn’t a basic function but an extra. If it fits the budget, the essentials are covered.

€25,000 for 100 guests: more money, same amount per head

€25,000 feels like the point where compromises stop being necessary. At 100 guests that isn’t quite true:

The same amount per head. That slightly more still goes to the celebration, and a live band fits, is purely because rings, outfits and photography are spread across more people. The weak spot is the buffer: late RSVPs and extra hours hit harder at a hundred guests, and that’s exactly where the reserve is thinnest. If you want security, drop the band or around eight guests.

The lesson applies at every level: when someone tells you their wedding cost €25,000, the first question isn’t what they got for it, but how many people were there.

€30,000 for 80 guests: where extra money still makes a difference

The same 80 guests as at €20,000. That lets us answer what the extra money actually still buys:

Money is well spent on everything that changes the evening for your guests, meaning food, drinks and music, and on everything that lasts, meaning photography. It evaporates fastest on decoration beyond a certain point, on stationery and on favours. Guests notice the jump from €90 to €118 a head more than the one from €118 to €160. From this level you’re increasingly paying for things that matter mainly to you, which is a legitimate reason, just a different one from before.

You can split the amounts completely differently

None of these tables is a prescription. If photography matters a lot to you, put more there and save somewhere that means less. That’s what good budget planning is about: putting the money where it’s worth most for your wedding.

Which percentages typically go where is in splitting your wedding budget by category. How to set your ceiling and keep the budget current throughout planning is in how to create a wedding budget and stick to it.

What HeyBride takes off your plate

A table in a blog post is good for reading, less so for keeping track. Once the first quotes arrive, every line drifts from the plan, and that’s exactly when the real work begins.

With HeyBride you track planned and actual costs per category in one place, with deposits, outstanding amounts and deadlines. You can see at any point how much is committed and how much buffer is left. And because the budget and guest list are connected, a changed guest count feeds straight into the numbers instead of leaving you to update three spreadsheets.

HeyBride is free to start. No subscription: if you need more later, you pay once and get 24 months of planning time plus three months after the wedding.

Start for free with HeyBride. Miri is already waiting.