Typically, food and drinks at your wedding reception account for 50% of your entire budget. If you work out your catering costs first, you’ll be able to build a reasonable budget around that price. But how much does it cost to cater a wedding?

Below, we’ve detailed the typical costs of wedding catering, what wedding catering includes, tips on saving money on wedding catering, a guide on how to select a caterer, and more!

Lots of websites will tell you the average cost of a wedding is $33,000. But an average price doesn’t help you that much. Instead of an average price, you can do a bit of math and figure out how much your wedding will cost. See the cost breakdown for wedding venues, wedding ceremony, wedding catering and vendors. Plus sample budgets for a 10,000 wedding, a 7,000 wedding, and a 2,000 wedding.

Before 2020 a small wedding was 50 guests or less. Today that’s a big wedding! If you’re planning your wedding this year, be sure to check your local rules. Then decide how big you want your guest list to be. You could plan a small wedding with 50 guests, a very small wedding with 25 guests or a micro wedding with 10 guests.

I’m going to be super annoying here and say - it costs however much you want it to cost! Before you kill me, though, keep reading. I’m going to give you the actual numbers and sample budgets for a few different price levels. You can have a great backyard wedding with any size budget - it just depends on your style. Here’s some ideas and sample budgets for a wedding at $10,000, $7,000 and $2,000.