The Free Wedding Budget Spreadsheet, No Signup Required

What's in the free file

The free spreadsheet is three sheets, built to be usable in about five minutes with nothing to configure:

• Start Here. A short setup guide, a Settings block for your currency symbol, total budget, and wedding date, a live "Days to go" counter worked out from that date, and a plain-language rundown of what the paid toolkit adds if you outgrow this one.
• Budget. Twelve fixed categories — Venue, Catering, Photography, Attire, Flowers, Music, Stationery, Rings, Transport, Cake, Hair & Makeup, and Other — each with a Planned amount you set, a Paid so far figure pulled automatically from the Payments tab, a Remaining figure, and a % of Total. An Unallocated tile at the top shows what's left of your total budget once every category's Planned amount is subtracted, and any category where you've paid more than you planned turns red.
• Payments. One flat log with five columns — Date, Category (a dropdown pulled straight from the Budget tab's own category list), Vendor, Amount, and Note. There are 60 pre-formatted rows ready to fill in, six of them already filled with example deposits so you can see the pattern before you start typing your own.

That's genuinely everything — there's no hidden fourth tab, no locked cells waiting for a paid unlock. What you see in the download is the whole product.

How to set up your budget categories

Open the Budget tab and work down the 12 rows, changing the Planned amount in column B for whatever fits your own wedding — the category names are fixed by design, so there's no setup step before you can start entering numbers. If something doesn't fit neatly into one of the 11 named categories, put it under Other; the Paid so far column still totals correctly as long as the Category you pick on the Payments tab matches the row it belongs to.

How to use it in Excel

1. Download the file and open it in Excel like any other workbook.
2. Open the Start Here tab and set your currency symbol, total budget, and wedding date.
3. Go to the Budget tab and adjust the Planned amount for each category to match your own numbers.
4. Go to the Payments tab. Replace the six example rows with your own, or leave them as a reference and start adding new rows underneath — pick a Category from the dropdown, add the vendor, and enter the amount.
5. Check the Budget tab any time — Paid so far, Remaining, and % of Total recalculate automatically, the same way any other Excel formula does.

How to use it in Google Sheets

The file isn't a native Google Sheet, but importing it takes under a minute and nothing about the formulas or the dropdown breaks in the process:

1. Open Google Sheets and go to File > Import.
2. Choose the Upload tab and select the .xlsx file you downloaded.
3. When prompted for an import location, choose Insert new sheet(s) (or "Create new spreadsheet" if you'd rather it live on its own) and confirm.
4. All three tabs come in together, along with the Category dropdown and every formula on the Budget and Start Here tabs — nothing needs to be rebuilt.
5. From there it behaves like any other Google Sheet: log payments on the Payments tab, and the Budget tab keeps itself current.

What the free version leaves out

This is meant to be honest, not a teaser with the good parts hidden: the free spreadsheet is a genuinely smaller product, not a crippled version of a bigger one. Specifically, it leaves out:

• A Dashboard with charts. The free Budget tab totals Planned and Paid so far per category and overall. It doesn't chart spend by category or plot budget against actual spending.
• Editable categories, a Vendor field, and Paid status. The paid toolkit's Budget & Expenses workbook has 14 editable categories instead of 12 fixed ones, plus a Vendor field and a Deposit paid / Paid in full / Unpaid status on every expense line.
• A dedicated vendor tracker. Something that logs every vendor you're considering or have booked, with a quote, a deposit paid, and a balance due worked out automatically for each one — a different job than logging payments against a category.
• A 60-task, 7-phase wedding planning timeline. A pre-built checklist running from 12+ months before the wedding through wedding week, with a progress summary that updates as you mark tasks done.
• A guest list tracker with RSVP tracking and a seating chart. RSVP status, meal choice, and gift tracking per guest, plus a seating tool that flags any table over capacity.

If any of those would actually get used, the Wedding Budget & Planning Toolkit on Etsy bundles all of it together, including this spreadsheet's bigger sibling with 14 editable categories and a full Dashboard instead of a fixed list.

More wedding budgeting tools

A few free pages that pair well with this spreadsheet: the Wedding Budget Calculator for a quick suggested spend breakdown before you commit numbers to the Budget tab, the Wedding Budget Checklist for the planning steps around the budget itself, and What to Include in a Wedding Budget Spreadsheet if you're unsure which line items you're likely to be missing.

Need something built around your exact wedding instead?

This spreadsheet is built around the generic shape of a wedding budget, and it won't fit every wedding perfectly. If you're planning something these 12 categories don't cover well — a multi-day event, a destination wedding, or a budget split across more than one household — the custom spreadsheet service builds a workbook around your actual numbers instead of asking you to adapt to a template.