Ultimate Wedding Budget Spreadsheet Template for Google Sheets & Excel

A row per category with the budget, the actual, the variance between them, the percentage of the budget used and a status on each. The percentage column is what makes categories comparable when their sizes are not. A venue two percent over and a stationery line forty percent over are different problems, and the money column alone will always rank the venue first. Status turns that into something readable at a glance down the list.

A row per vendor, each with the category they cover, the total agreed, the deposit paid, the balance still due, the date it falls due, a status, contact details and notes. This is the sheet that stops a wedding budget from being a planning document and makes it an operational one. A wedding is a dozen or more separate contracts with different payment dates, and the failure mode is never forgetting the venue - it is a balance falling due for a supplier nobody has thought about since spring. Having the contact beside the balance means the person chasing it does not have to go looking.

Dated payments with the vendor, the amount, how it was paid, a status and a note. Where the vendor sheet answers what is owed, this one answers what has actually moved and when. Between them they settle the question every couple asks in the last month - not what the wedding costs, but how much is still to leave the account before the day.

A guest count at the top, then each category divided by it to give a per-guest figure. It exists to price a decision rather than to judge one. Catering, drinks, favours and stationery move with the number of people; the venue, the photographer and the rings do not - and seeing which is which lets you work out what twenty more guests would genuinely add rather than guessing at a share of the whole.

Planned against actual by category with the variance between them, laid out for reading side by side rather than for entry. It is the summary to look at monthly rather than daily - the sheet that shows whether the plan is holding in shape rather than whether a particular payment has gone out.

Six figures and two charts. The total budget, what has been spent, what remains, how many vendors are booked, how many payments are still pending and the cost per guest. Vendors booked and payments pending are the two that describe where you are in the process rather than in the arithmetic. A wedding six weeks out with four vendors unbooked is a different situation from one with four payments pending, and the money figures alone read identically in both.