The Average Cost of A Wedding

This entry is from our Expert Guest series where wedding and honeymoon professionals share their best tips on creating memories that last a lifetime.

What’s the average cost of a wedding this year?

It’s the million-dollar question that every other wedding media hack wants to know. As a result, all the prominent wedding magazines, including Brides, Perfect Wedding, You and Your Wedding, and Wedding Ideas conduct surveys in order to find out how much their readers are spending on the Big Day. And for a number of years now, the figures have remained relatively constant. The average cost of a wedding in the UK in 2015, and in all likelihood in 2016, is in the region of £20-22,000 ($27-29,000.)

Is The Average Cost Of A Wedding Accurate?

Now whatever way you look at it, that’s a lot of cash to be blowing on a single day – even if it is going to be one of the most important days in a couple’s lifetime. To put it into context, very few would ever consider spending £20K on a party to celebrate the birth of their first child. However, because it’s a wedding, society dictates that it’s acceptable and appropriate to spend a small fortune on such an event. After all, it’s what everyone does, and no one wants to be different do they?!

However, by digging a little deeper into the figures, one will soon discover that the average wedding spend is not an especially accurate or reliable. This is because an average calculation often spans a wide range of figures. In fact, one could argue that the £22K average wedding spend in the UK is fundamentally flawed due to extremes in the data that render the figure misleading or irrelevant.

The Survey Says….

For example, let’s say that of 100 randomly selected people who were asked how much they spent on their wedding, 90 indicated that they spent £15,000 ($20,000), 5 spent £75,000 and 5 others spent £150,000. Clearly, the vast majority of people spent £15,000, however due to a minority of extreme cases, the average spend is hiked to £24,750.

Average figures are easy, convenient, and great for the wedding industry as a whole, but they can be rather misleading for brides and grooms and can even encourage couples to significantly and unnecessarily overspend.

This anomaly is backed up by research conducted by Confetti website who surveyed 2200 British brides in 2015/16 and released figures showing that 80% of couples spent less than £15,000.

The Knot website in the USA also demonstrated that the average spend in America is also skewed by a small number of extreme figures. For instance in Utah, Oregon, Montana, New Mexico, North and South Dakota among others, the average spend in 2015 was $20,000. Yet, because of a small number of bi- spending brides in States such as New York (whose average spend was $82,000) and Chicago ($61,000) the overall average spend in the USA was $32,650.

What Are Typical Wedding Costs?

Instead of focussing on the average spend, it is more helpful for brides and grooms to be aware of the typical fees a specific service or supplier might charge.

For example, you can hire a decent photographer or cinematographer for around £1,000. And a good quality caterer will charge upwards of £30.00 per head for a 3 course silver service meal, whilst a cake will cost from £300.00, a DJ from around £500.00, a florist from £600.00, bridal car £350.00, and hair/makeup £250.00. Obviously, the more established or better known they are, the more they can charge. And newer suppliers will naturally undercut to attract business. However, these ballpark figures are far more accurate and useful for brides-to-be who often have no idea how much a particular wedding service or supplier costs.

Wedding costs do not include the honeymoon, but many smart couples offset the cost of a wedding trip by requesting gifts to the Honeyfund wedding registry.

The table below is an amalgamation of results from surveys taken by You & Your Wedding, Brides and Wedding Day magazines.

NOTE: when assessing these figures it is important to note that the readers of these prominent magazines tend to spend more on their wedding than the readers of magazines such as Wedding Ideas. For convenience of readers in the US, the figures in pounds have been converted to current US dollars.

Bio:Sam Ketterer is the Managing Director of Absolute Perfection Wedding Consultancy established in 2003, as one of only a handful of wedding planners operating in the UK. AP, a small team of leading London wedding designers creating beautiful weddings worldwide, guarantees personable, discreet, and first-class service for a stress-free engagement and a wedding day that is¦Absolute Perfection!

Alongside his wedding duties, Sam also run popular wedding planner courses for aspiring young (and not so young!) wedding designers and DIY brides! Their online Academy operates one of the UK’s most informative and in-depth wedding planning courses, which has trained some of the UK’s most notable and award-winning designers. The latest training course, Version 9, is a comprehensive distance learning program that will teach you all you need to know about wedding planning, including setting up and running a wedding planning business. See their Wedding Academy for full details.

You can learn more about Absolute Perfection Wedding Consultancy or get in touch by email email or phone at 00 44 (0)20 8404 2525.