As of 13 August 2026, AI can calculate your wedding budget.

What to actually do

1. Use a tool built for this

   The route this page recommends

2. Do it yourself

   Second choice

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 15 minutes until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open a spreadsheet and create columns for category, item, amount, status, supplier and notes.
   2. Gather your total available budget, savings, contributions, guest number, priorities and wedding date, then record each confirmed quote, deposit and payment in the spreadsheet.
   3. Paste the spreadsheet contents and the copyable prompt into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini, replacing each bracketed slot with your information.
   4. Ask the model to return the budget table, totals, amount paid, amount still due, missing costs and supplier questions in the requested format.
   5. Compare every drafted amount and status with the original quote, invoice or payment record, and correct the spreadsheet where they differ.
   6. Enter the checked figures into the spreadsheet and use its formulas or a calculator to confirm the total, amount paid and amount remaining before making bookings.

   Prompt

   Act as a careful wedding-budget calculator for a UK wedding. Use pounds sterling and calculate only from the information I provide. Do not invent supplier prices, taxes, fees or allowances. If a cost is missing, label it as missing rather than estimating it.
   
   Create a clear budget table with these columns: category, item, amount, status, source or note. Use the statuses confirmed quote, estimate supplied by me, paid, deposit due, or missing. Then calculate the total committed or expected spend, the amount already paid, the amount still due, and the amount left from the available budget. Check the arithmetic twice and show the calculation for each total.
   
   Separate essential costs from optional costs. Flag duplicated items, unclear figures, costs that may be excluded from a quote, and any item that needs confirmation from a supplier. If the budget is short, suggest cuts based only on the priorities I give you. Do not recommend financial products or tell me what I can afford. State clearly that this is not professional advice.
   
   My information:
   - Total wedding budget: [amount in pounds]
   - Wedding date or planning deadline: [date or unknown]
   - Expected guest numbers: [number or unknown]
   - Money already saved: [amount in pounds]
   - Further contributions and their sources: [details or none]
   - Priorities: [for example, food, photography, music, accessibility]
   - Confirmed quotes and payments: [paste each supplier, item, amount and payment status]
   - Estimates I have supplied: [paste items and amounts, or none]
   - Other known costs: [paste items and amounts, or none]
   - Costs I am unsure about: [paste them, or none]
   
   Return the finished table first, followed by totals, missing information, risks and practical questions to send to suppliers. Do not fill gaps with general wedding averages.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.

3. Hand it to a person

   The distant third

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.