Wedding budget calculator, backyard edition.

Set your guest count, pick a level for each line, and the total keeps up. The rentals, power, permits and crew lines are in from the start, because in a backyard wedding they are the budget, not the extras.

Planning the real thing?

The calculator gives you the shape. The DIY Wedding Planner Spreadsheet holds the actual wedding: every deposit and balance due, the guest list with meal counts, the rental loads with delivery windows and who receives them, and a run sheet for the day.

8 tabs: Start Here, Budget and Payments, Guests and Meals, Seating, Rentals and DIY Logistics, Day-Of Run Sheet, Vendors, Checklist
Excel and Google Sheets editions, each built and tested natively
A filled example wedding and a narrated walkthrough video included

$19.99 (list $29.99)

Get the planner on Gumroad

Rentals coming at you already? Keep the free DIY wedding rentals checklist open next to it.

How these ranges were built

Each category carries three planning levels, low, typical and high, drawn from what backyard and DIY weddings actually spend line by line: rental company price sheets for tents, tables, chairs, dinnerware and restroom trailers; grocery and drop-off catering math for food; and the small lines couples report forgetting until the week of the wedding. The typical column is set so an 80-guest backyard wedding lands just under thirteen thousand dollars all in, which matches what a carefully kept DIY budget looks like when the receipts are added up. Food, drink and paper scale with the guest count; the rest are mostly flat, because a tent costs what it costs whether 70 or 90 people sit under it.

What backyard budgets usually forget

Ice, and somewhere cold to keep it: 200 pounds goes faster than anyone expects.
Power: a quiet generator, heavy extension cords, and tape to keep them out of the walkways.
Restrooms: a trailer for a full day, once the guest count passes a house bathroom's dignity.
Permits and insurance: yard, noise and parking permits, plus a one-day liability policy.
Rain: tent sidewalls, or a second cover, decided before the forecast decides for you.
Feeding the crew: the relatives setting up at 7 in the morning are eating lunch too.
The morning after: a rental pickup window, and someone named to meet it and count.