What a wedding budget spreadsheet needs to do
Most wedding spreadsheets fail for the same reason: they record what things cost and not when they are paid. A budget that balances perfectly can still leave you £17,000 short in a single month.
A working sheet answers four questions at a glance: what is this costing, what have we paid, what is still owed, and when does it leave the account.
The columns that earn their place
| Column | Why it is there |
|---|---|
| Category | So the totals roll up to the percentage split |
| Supplier | The contract this row belongs to |
| Budgeted | Your allocation before quotes arrived |
| Quoted | What they actually said — keep it separate from budgeted so you can see the drift |
| Contracted | What you signed, which is sometimes neither of the above |
| Deposit paid | Amount and date |
| Balance due | Contracted minus paid, calculated, never typed |
| Due date | The single most useful column and the one most often missing |
| Paid? | A yes/no you can filter |
| Refundable until | Straight from the contract, recorded once so you never have to reopen the PDF |
| Notes | What the price includes, so you can compare later |
The three tabs
Budget. Categories, allocations and the percentage split, with a single total at the top that turns red when the allocations exceed it.
Payments. One row per supplier with the columns above, sorted by due date rather than by category. This is the tab you will actually open.
Cash flow by month. A pivot of the payments tab summed by month. It exists to answer one question: is there a month where more leaves the account than you will have. Build it early, because the answer is fixable in month three and not in month eleven.
Three formulas worth having
| What it does | Formula |
|---|---|
| Balance still owed | =Contracted - Deposit |
| Total due in a given month | =SUMIFS(Balance, DueDate, ">="&MonthStart, DueDate, "<="&MonthEnd) |
| Percentage of budget committed | =SUM(Contracted)/TotalBudget |
Everything else can be typed. Those three cannot, because they are the ones that change every time you add a row.
Start from a sheet that already has this
The budget spreadsheet in the planner bundle ships with the tabs, the columns and the formulas already in place.
Common questions
What should a wedding budget spreadsheet include?
Category, supplier, budgeted, quoted, contracted, deposit paid, balance due, due date, paid status and refund deadline. The due date column is the one most often left out and the one that prevents the final-month cash crunch.
How many tabs does a wedding budget spreadsheet need?
Three. A budget tab for the category split, a payments tab sorted by due date, and a cash flow tab that sums payments by month so you can see whether any single month is unaffordable.
Why track quoted and contracted separately?
Because they differ, and the gap is where budgets drift. Keeping the original allocation, the quote and the signed figure in three columns shows you exactly where and when the wedding got more expensive.
What is the most common wedding budget mistake?
Recording amounts without dates. A budget that balances in total can still fail, because most suppliers want their balance in the same final month.