Wedding Budget Planner for Ireland: What Will Your Wedding Cost?

Set your guest numbers, tick the suppliers you're booking and the planner below adds up a realistic Irish wedding budget, line by line. Every starting figure is a published average, and every one can be changed to your own quote.

The planner starts from the latest surveys of Irish couples. The meal price, guest numbers and most supplier figures come from the weddingsonline survey of over 1,000 couples in December 2025, and the rest from its January 2025 survey of 641 couples. The ceremony room and evening food lines use the figures in our guide to wedding venue costs per head. Your figures are saved in your own browser, so you can come back and type in each quote as it arrives.

Wedding Budget Planner

How the planner adds it up

• Guests drive the biggest line. The meal and drinks reception is your day guests multiplied by the price per head. At the survey averages of 141 guests and €107 each, that's €15,087, about 41% of the survey's average budget. Change either number and the venue line, the total and the cost per guest all move with it.
• Evening guests are counted separately. Guests invited for the evening only are usually charged a lower rate for the evening food, €8 to €15 each. The planner starts at 40 evening guests at €12, the figures in our venue guide's worked example.
• Tick what you're booking. The planner starts with a typical selection ticked, and leaves a wedding planner, a content creator, evening entertainment and the honeymoon unticked for you to add. Type a figure into an unticked line and it's counted.
• Type over the averages. When a quote arrives, type it in. The average stays under each line, so you can see how your quote compares.
• Add your own lines for anything that isn't listed: hair and make-up, favours, money behind the bar, or rooms for your parents, which 63% of couples in the January 2025 survey paid for.
• Set your budget to see what's left, or how far over you are.

Where the starting figures come from

The December 2025 survey is the latest, but the article reporting it didn't list every category, so for the DJ, content creator, flowers, rings, suit, celebrant, car and honeymoon the planner uses the January 2025 figures. Six of the eight categories published in both rounds rose between them, and the meal went from €93 to €107 per guest, so the older figures may run a little low for a 2026 or 2027 wedding. Our Irish wedding statistics page has every category for every survey year, and we update the planner when a new survey is published.

Averages, not quotes

Each starting figure is the average of what surveyed couples spent, which puts it in the middle of a wide range. A Saturday in July with a two-photographer studio sits well above the photography average, and a midweek winter wedding well below it. Our price guides for photographers and videographers set out the bands behind each average, and the venue guide shows per-head prices running from €55 to €250 or more.

With its starting selection, the planner comes to €31,265, below the survey's average budget of €36,641. The survey's category averages and its average total are separate figures, so they don't add up line for line: not every couple books every supplier, and the published categories leave out things many couples pay for, such as hair and make-up, favours and décor. Add those as your own lines.

Then leave room for the unexpected. In the January 2025 survey, 51% of couples went over budget, and 78% of those by more than €5,000. A contingency, added as your own line, is the simplest protection.

Bringing the total down

The planner makes the trade-offs visible. These are the levers that move it most, from our venue guide:

• The guest list. Every day guest removed takes the per-head price off the venue bill, €107 at the survey average. Take ten off the day guests and watch the total.
• The day and the month. Sunday to Thursday typically brings 10 to 25% off the per-head rate, and November to March is priced lower again. Knock 20% off the meal price to see what a midweek date might do.
• The middle tier. Choose each supplier's middle package and add the one extra you care about, rather than taking the top tier.
• What matters most to you. Decide which two or three lines you'll protect, then trim around them. The advice on saving money without regret in our photographer guide works for every supplier.

The guides behind each line

• Venue and food: wedding venue costs per head, covering what per head includes, minimum numbers, midweek rates and corkage.
• Photo and film: wedding photographer prices, wedding videographer prices and content creator costs.
• Music: wedding bands and DJs in Ireland.
• The ceremony: getting married in Ireland, for the notification fee and the three months' notice.
• The whole budget: average wedding budgets in Ireland, and every published figure on our Irish wedding statistics page.
• Before you book: our printable questions to ask every wedding supplier.

Sources

• weddingsonline, The Real Cost of an Irish Wedding in 2026, survey of over 1,000 couples, December 2025: the meal price, guest numbers and average budget, and the photographer, videographer, band, evening entertainment, dress, planner, cake and invitations figures.
• weddingsonline, Weddings Cost 3.96% More This Year, survey of 641 couples, January 2025: the DJ, content creator, flowers, rings, suit, celebrant, car and honeymoon figures, the share of couples who went over budget and the share who paid for their parents' rooms.
• HSE, Getting married in Ireland: the €200 notification fee.
• Our guide to wedding venue costs per head: the ceremony room and evening food ranges, which are our reading of venue packages and the quotes couples share with us rather than survey data.