Event Budget Calculator & Planner

It adds seven cost line items - venue hire, catering (guest count x cost per head), decor and flowers, entertainment, photography, staffing, and miscellaneous extras - into a subtotal, then adds your contingency percentage on top. For example, a £2,350 subtotal with a 10% contingency adds £235, for a £2,585 total.

Industry guidance from the Abastio Event Budget Contingency Planning Guide puts 10-15% of the subtotal as standard for an established event format with a familiar venue and experienced suppliers, rising to 15-20% for a first-time event, a new venue, or one with a significant outdoor or weather-dependent component. The calculator defaults to 10% and flags anything under 5% as "Contingency Too Low."

If you enter a Target budget figure above £0, the Assessment module compares your calculated total against that target (Within Budget / Marginal / Over Budget). If you leave Target budget blank, there is nothing to compare the total against, so the Assessment module instead checks whether your contingency percentage falls within the 10-20% industry-recommended range.

The 2026 Hitched National Wedding Survey, which polled over 2,000 UK newlyweds and found an average total wedding cost of £21,990 - about 4% lower than the 2024 peak. A separate 2026 UK Wedding Report from Bridebook, based on roughly 7,000 couples, puts the average slightly lower at £20,604. This tool uses the Hitched £21,990 figure as its Wedding-type target-budget default.

According to the same 2026 Hitched survey, the UK average spend per wedding guest rose 4% year on year to £272, as couples increasingly prioritise guest experience over overall headcount. This tool's Smart Insights panel compares your own cost-per-guest figure against that £272 benchmark whenever Event type is set to Wedding.

The tool compares your entered catering cost per head against the general UK event catering range of £8 to £80+ per head reported by Bark.com's catering price guide, and against format-specific ranges: £15-£20 for a cold buffet, £20-£30 for a hot buffet, £10-£60 for finger food/canapés depending on quality, and £75-£120 for a sit-down plated meal.

Not automatically. The Jigsaw Conferences 2026 UK Venue Pricing Benchmark found that London events typically cost 25-30% more than equivalent events in other major UK cities across venue, catering and supplier rates. If you're planning a London event, increase your Venue hire and Catering per head figures by roughly that amount, since the tool has no separate region field.

No. Enter each figure on whatever basis your supplier quoted it - inc-VAT or ex-VAT - consistently across every field. Most UK venues and caterers charge the standard 20% VAT rate once their turnover passes the gov.uk VAT registration threshold of £90,000, so if you have an ex-VAT quote from a VAT-registered supplier, add 20% before entering it. A small or sole-trader supplier under that threshold may not charge VAT at all.

Anything not covered by the other six line items - invitations and stationery, favours or gifts for guests, transport or parking, insurance, signage, and any small supplier fees that don't fit neatly into venue, catering, decor, entertainment, photography or staffing. The default £100 is a placeholder; increase it if your event has several smaller extras.

They default to £0 so leaving them blank does not affect your total at all - they exist because many events do budget for professional photography (default £0, example placeholder £300) or paid on-the-day help (staffing, default £0, example placeholder £200), and removing the fields would make the calculator less useful for events that do need them.

Yes - set Event type to "Corporate Event or Work Function." The calculation is identical; only the wedding-specific £21,990/£272 benchmarks in Smart Insights are hidden, since no comparably robust published UK average exists for corporate events specifically. Enter your own target budget to get a Within Budget / Marginal / Over Budget read instead.

It's a representative midpoint from the Bark.com catering price guide for each style - for example, Cold buffet defaults to £17.50 (within the reported £15-£20 range) and Sit-down/plated meal defaults to £95 (within the reported £75-£120 range). Treat it as a starting point: as soon as you have a real quote, overwrite the Catering cost per head field.

Catering total becomes £0 (0 guests x any per-head figure), but the cost-per-guest figure is still calculated by treating guest count as at least 1 for that one division, to avoid an undefined result. In practice a 0-guest budget only makes sense while you're still deciding on headcount.

Yes, but only as a prompt to double-check, not a hard error. Above 20% the Assessment module (when no target budget is set) shows "Contingency Higher Than Typical" - a high contingency isn't necessarily wrong, but the Abastio guidance recommends attaching it to specific named risks rather than using it as a generic buffer.

Yes - select the matching Event type from the dropdown. The calculation logic is the same across every event type; only the label changes and, for weddings only, the Smart Insights panel adds the national-average benchmark comparisons.

Treat it as a planning estimate, not a quote. Every figure you enter is your own estimate or an early supplier quote, and the tool does not add VAT, deposits, or cancellation terms - always confirm final costs directly with your venue and suppliers before committing to a budget.