In brief: what budget should you set for a wedding in 2027?
There is no reliable “average budget” for a wedding in France: the four main sources in the market quote anywhere between €13,500 and €19,293, a 43% spread, because they are not measuring the same thing. The only calculation that holds up separates what does not depend on the number of guests (outfits, photography, music: €4,000 to €11,000) from what depends on it directly (€80 to €150 per head). On that method, a wedding for 100 guests lands somewhere between €12,000 and €26,000 depending on the trade-offs you make — and that range faithfully reproduces the published averages.
- Your budget depends first and foremost on the number of guests: it is the only lever that moves almost every line item at once.
- The reception (venue plus catering) accounts for half to 60% of the total. Everything else is negotiated at the margins.
- Six regularly forgotten line items add 15 to 20% to the final bill: overtime, making good, accommodation, tips, accessories, the morning-after brunch.
- Among couples who post a project on Planners, 45.1% state a total budget of €3,000 to €10,000 and 21.6% under €3,000 (n = 617): the small-budget wedding is the norm, not the exception.
- A wedding planner costs from €1,750 on average for day-of coordination to €4,250 for full planning (Planners.fr study 2024, n = 125). Planners lists 737 active wedding planners.
Want the figure for your set-up rather than a national average? Our wedding budget calculator gives you a range in two minutes, based on your region, your guest count and your priorities.
Average wedding budget in 2027: why the average misleads you
Let us start with the problem nobody raises. If you search for “average wedding budget”, you will land on four different figures, published in the same year, by four serious players in the industry.
| Source | Average budget quoted | Basis of calculation |
|---|---|---|
| Mariages.net, wedding industry report 2026 | €19,293 | 90 guests on average, excluding honeymoon and engagement ring |
| BforBank (figure attributed to the wedding fair, via BFMTV) | €16,000 in 2025 | self-declared, methodology not published |
| Budget-Mariage.com | €14,182 | 115 guests, 9,200 couple simulations since 2022 |
| Mariée.fr | €13,500 | 100 guests, a Mariée.fr reconstruction based on a 2023 CSA survey (which itself measured a planned budget of €9,873) |
Between the lowest and the highest, the gap reaches €5,800. This is not imprecision, it is a difference of definition: some are measuring budgets that are planned and declared on a form, others budgets that were spent after the wedding, and the latter almost always exceed the former. Add to that the honeymoon being counted or not, and samples with more or less money behind them.
Above all, an average flattens the very thing you care about. A wedding for 40 people at the family home and a reception for 180 guests in a château end up inside the same number. The average exists, but almost nobody gets married at the average.
Our own data proves the point: among couples posting a wedding project on Planners, 21.6% state a budget below €3,000, 45.1% between €3,000 and €10,000, 24.1% between €10,000 and €20,000, 7.9% between €20,000 and €40,000 and 1.3% above that (Planners data, August 2026, n = 617 respondents). Two thirds of couples therefore sit below every published average. Bear in mind that these amounts are stated at the search stage, before any quotes come in — they describe the target budget, not the final one. But the message is clear: getting married on €8,000 is in no way abnormal.
What a wedding costs by guest count: 30, 50, 100, 150
The right way to think about this is not to start from an average but to break it into two blocks. Financially, a wedding is a fixed base plus a cost per head.
The fixed base: what you pay whether there are 30 of you or 200
Your dress does not cost more because you invite thirty extra people. Nor does the photographer, the DJ or the rings. Here is that base, in a modest version and a comfortable one, drawn from the ranges published by the main French comparison sites.
| Line item independent of guest count | Modest version | Comfortable version |
|---|---|---|
| Outfits for both partners (dress, suit, alterations) | €1,300 | €3,500 |
| Wedding rings | €300 | €1,200 |
| Photographer (plus videographer in the comfortable version) | €1,000 | €2,500 |
| DJ or live music | €800 | €1,500 |
| Stationery and decoration away from the tables | €400 | €1,200 |
| Hair, make-up, transport for the couple | €300 | €900 |
| Total fixed base | €4,100 | €10,800 |
The variable cost: €80 to €150 per guest
The rest depends directly on the number of guests: food and drink, the share of the venue hire linked to capacity, table decoration, service staff, favours. By stripping the fixed base out of the published averages and dividing by the guest count used in each study, you arrive at a range of €80 to €150 per head. That is consistent with the catering cost most often quoted in France, around €110 per guest.
| Number of guests | Variable cost | Estimated total budget | Cost per guest, all in |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 | €2,400 – €4,500 | €6,500 – €15,500 | €215 – €515 |
| 50 | €4,000 – €7,500 | €8,000 – €18,500 | €160 – €370 |
| 100 | €8,000 – €15,000 | €12,000 – €26,000 | €120 – €260 |
| 150 | €12,000 – €22,500 | €16,000 – €33,500 | €107 – €223 |
Two checks before going further. First, this model is not an opinion: applied to 90 guests it gives €11,300 – €24,300, a range that contains Mariages.net’s €19,293; applied to 100 guests it contains Mariée.fr’s €13,500; applied to 115, Budget-Mariage’s €14,182. A method that reproduces all three published averages is a method that holds.
Second, look at the last column. The cost per guest falls as the guest count rises, because the fixed base is spread across more heads. Cutting your list saves money in absolute terms, never proportionally. That is why weddings for 30 people so often disappoint the people organising them: you divide the guests by three and the bill by only two.
This structure also explains the most common reception size. Among couples registered on Planners, 51.0% invite between 50 and 100 people, 22.9% fewer than 50, 23.1% between 100 and 200 and only 3.0% more than 200 (n = 743). The 200-guest mark is now the exception.
Splitting the budget line by line
Once the overall figure is set, the question becomes: how do you divide it up? Here are the proportions that hold steadiest from one source to another, with the corresponding amount for a €15,000 budget.
| Line item | Share of budget | On €15,000 |
|---|---|---|
| Catering, drinks, service | 35 – 40% | €5,250 – €6,000 |
| Venue hire | 15 – 20% | €2,250 – €3,000 |
| Photography and video | 10 – 15% | €1,500 – €2,250 |
| Outfits and rings | 8 – 12% | €1,200 – €1,800 |
| Music and entertainment | 8 – 10% | €1,200 – €1,500 |
| Decoration and flowers | 5 – 8% | €750 – €1,200 |
| Stationery, favours, sundries | 3 – 6% | €450 – €900 |
These shares are our own synthesis of several French sources; they converge with the breakdown from Budget-Mariage.com (41% for reception and catering, 14% for the venue). Mariages.net, for its part, makes the reception venue the single largest line item (€5,500 to €6,500 out of a €19,293 budget) — further proof that the way the budget is carved up varies from one source to another. Take away the practical conclusion: venue and catering together account for half to 60% of your budget. Negotiating 10% off the catering matters more than a 30% discount on the flowers. That is where your time should go, and nowhere else.
Two line items deserve an article to themselves, so wide are the gaps within them: wedding catering, and venue hire — which we break down in our guide to wedding venue hire costs.
The wedding planner does not appear in that table, because they cannot be treated as one line item among others. According to the Planners.fr study carried out in 2024 among 125 professionals, day-of coordination is charged at €1,300 to €3,050 (average €1,750), partial planning at €1,500 to €4,700 (average €2,500) and full planning at €3,050 to €6,050 (average €4,250). Against a €15,000 budget, that comes to roughly 12% for coordination and 28% for the full package. The detail of each package and its scope is in our guide to wedding planner costs.
While we are here, be wary of the “8 to 12% of the total budget” rule you see everywhere for estimating a wedding planner’s fee. Across 310 Planners couples who declared both their budget and the amount they had in mind for planning, only 26% actually fall inside that band, and the ratio between the two runs from 1.9 to 26 depending on the couple. The rule has no predictive value whatsoever.
Regional differences: Paris, big cities, countryside
Here a received idea falls over. Everyone repeats that the Paris region is the most expensive place in France to get married. Mariages.net’s 2026 report says otherwise: Nouvelle-Aquitaine comes top with an average budget of €21,641, ahead of the Paris region (€20,794) and Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (€20,333).
The explanation is obvious once you have seen it: these figures follow the location of the wedding, not where the couple live. And a great many Paris couples get married elsewhere — in the region one family comes from, at an estate in the south-west, on the coast — taking Parisian spending power with them. They pull up the averages for Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Provence, and lighten the one for the Paris region.
Like for like, however, Paris remains far more expensive. Our 2024 study measures a 35% premium on the fees of Paris-region wedding planners, with full planning charged at €5,000 to €7,000 there against €3,050 to €6,050 nationally. The same logic applies to venues, constrained as they are by property prices. If you are looking for a professional near you, our wedding planner directory is the place to start.
The real divide, then, is not Paris versus the provinces but city versus countryside, sometimes an hour’s drive apart. Moving 40 kilometres away from a large city often brings the venue cost down more than any negotiation ever will — provided you accept the logistical trade-off: guest accommodation, shuttles, and travel for your suppliers, who bill their mileage.
The 6 forgotten costs that blow the budget by 20%
A wedding budget almost never overruns on a big line item, because you keep an eye on the big line items. It overruns on an accumulation of small ones that no quote ever mentions. The ranges below are the ones suppliers themselves publish.
- Overtime. The DJ’s contract ends at 2am and the party carries on; the photographer is booked until dessert and you want pictures of the cake. Budget €50 to €200 an hour, decided on the night, and therefore never negotiated.
- Making the venue good. Professional cleaning, removing chair covers, taking away the rubbish, stripping out the decoration: €100 to €250 in most cases, more if the contract requires an approved contractor.
- Accommodation. If you are covering all or part of the overnight stays, allow €50 to €150 per room. Across twenty rooms, that line exists.
- Tips and gratuities. Practice varies in France, but outstanding service from a caterer calls for a gesture: 5 to 10% of the cost of the services concerned, according to people in the industry.
- Outfit accessories. Shoes, jewellery, underwear, a wrap for the evening, an outfit for the following day: €100 to €500 that were not in the price of the dress.
- The day after. Brunch for guests who stayed over, returning hire items, a hotel night for the couple. You either budget for it or state clearly that it is not covered — the ambiguity costs more than either option.
To those six lines add three habits that head off nasty surprises: check what your cancellation insurance actually covers, read the venue’s security deposit clause (often €500 to €1,500 held), and confirm whether the prices on your quotes are stated excluding or including VAT. A caterer’s quote excluding VAT is 20% away from the figure you had in your head.
The most useful rule in this whole article: keep 15% of your total budget in reserve, unallocated. This is not money you will have failed to spend by the end — it is the money that stops you giving something up three weeks before the wedding.
Small budget: the 3 trade-offs that genuinely work
Lists of money-saving tips are everywhere: make your own stationery, buy your dress second-hand, pick your own flowers. Those gestures save a few hundred euros and cost a great many hours. Three trade-offs, by contrast, change the order of magnitude.
1. Change the day or the season
This is the only free lever that acts on every line item at once: venue, caterer, photographer and DJ all apply lower rates outside peak-season Saturdays. Our 2024 study measures, on the wedding planner side, a 15% drop in fees in winter — the only genuine seasonal discount in the profession — and a 5% premium on the most sought-after summer Saturdays. Venues apply even sharper differences. A Friday in September or a Saturday in March is nothing like 15 June.
2. Choose a reception format, not just a venue
A standing drinks-and-canapés reception costs structurally less than a seated, plated dinner: fewer staff, less furniture, less crockery, a smaller room for the same headcount. Lunch costs less than dinner: less alcohol, no evening party to fund. The format is decided early and echoes through everything; the menu is discussed at the margins.
3. Cut the list, but properly
Removing ten guests saves €800 to €1,500, which is not nothing but does not rescue a budget. Going from 120 people to 70, on the other hand, opens up entirely different venues and shifts the whole picture. If the question of numbers comes up, it comes up on a large scale — and as early as possible, before you book anything sized for the old list.
A word on one stubborn false economy: dropping the wedding planner to protect the budget. A wedding planner negotiates with the same suppliers all year round and knows the real rates; on a €20,000 budget, a 10% discount already covers half the cost of full planning. And day-of coordination, at €1,750 on average, remains within reach of modest budgets: it is towards that, and towards partial planning, that the 52.6% of couples budgeting €500 to €2,000 for this line naturally turn (n = 346).
Estimate your budget in 2 minutes
Every figure in this article is a national range. Yours depends on five variables only you know: the region, the guest count, the season, the reception format, and the two or three things you will not compromise on.
Our wedding budget calculator is free, requires no sign-up, and gives you a line-by-line range in two minutes. Above all it will tell you where your project sits relative to couples with the same set-up as you — information that is considerably more useful than a national average.
And if you want to test that estimate against the view of a professional in your area, Planners lists 737 active wedding planners right across France. A first conversation, usually free, is often enough to tell whether your budget and your wishes are compatible.
Frequently asked questions about wedding budgets
What budget do you need for a wedding of 100 people?
Between €12,000 and €26,000 on our calculations, or €120 to €260 per guest all in. The bottom of the range corresponds to an off-season reception, at a venue where you can bring your own caterer, with a modest base of services; the top to a summer Saturday in a city with photographer, videographer and floral decoration. The published averages for this size of reception — €13,500 from Mariée.fr, €19,293 from Mariages.net for 90 guests — all sit inside that range.
How do you work out your wedding budget?
In four steps, in this order. Start from the money you genuinely have, family contributions included, rather than from a quote. Take 15% off it as a reserve. Divide the rest according to the proportions in the table above, beginning with venue and catering, which absorb half to 60% of the total. Then sense-check it against your guest count: if the result falls outside the €80 to €150 per head range for the variable part, it is the guest list that needs revisiting, not the table.
How do you cut your wedding budget?
In descending order of effectiveness: change the date (not a Saturday, not peak season), change the format (canapés rather than a seated dinner, lunch rather than dinner), cut the guest list substantially, move away from a major city, and only then negotiate with suppliers. Savings on decoration, stationery or favours come last: they account for less than 10% of the budget and cost a great deal of time.
What budget should you allow for wedding flowers?
Decoration and flowers together account for 5 to 8% of the budget, or €750 to €1,200 on a €15,000 wedding. Published ranges run from €50 for a bridal bouquet alone to €1,500 for a complete floral scheme. The most decisive factor is not quantity but seasonality: a local, in-season flower costs three to four times less than an imported out-of-season variety, for the same volume.