State-level companion: US Wedding Cost by State 2026 → — the same data across all 50 states and DC, set against state median household income and home values.
Weddings in America cost $40,160 in 2025, up 37% from 2015. The per-category inflation is rolled forward from BLS CPI and PPI subcomponents, not industry surveys. Yet the wedding has quietly become the easier of the two big life-stage savings goals. Median household income rose 47% over the same decade. Median home values rose 76%. In every major US metro the 20% home down payment now costs several times more than the wedding it precedes. In San Francisco, the down payment equals 5.2 weddings stacked end to end.
2015 → 2025
median household income, 2025
on a median San Francisco home
tracked at 2015, 2020 and 2025
engagement + two wedding bands
each tracked individually
Inflation has hit the wedding budget unevenly. Transportation services are up 59% since 2015 and catering 49%. Apparel is up only 4%: a bridal gown bought in 2015 costs roughly the same today, while the limousine that drives it to the venue costs half-again more.
The most extreme down-payment-to-wedding ratio in the data: San Jose, where one home down payment equals 6.7 weddings. The top five (San Jose, San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Seattle) are all West Coast. The cheapest metros sit at 1.4×.
Average US wedding guest count in 2019: 131. In 2020: 66. The pandemic didn't depress wedding spending on a per-event basis; it cut events in half. By 2023, full-size weddings had returned, and so had the budgets.
Every cost. Every city. Three years.
Median totals for a 100-guest wedding in each metro area. Sort any column. Pick one year for a snapshot, or pick any two to see the % change between them (the change column appears automatically). Defaults to the full-decade 2015–2025 view.
Compare two metros
Pick any two metros and a year to see the gap. The buttons below switch all data (cost, income, home value, ratios) in sync with the main table.
| City ↕ | Wedding Cost Components | Economic Context | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ΣTotal↕ | ⌂Venue↕ | 🍽Cater- ing↕ |
◌Rings↕ | ◫Photo & Video↕ |
✿Florals↕ | ✦Dress & Suit↕ |
♫Music / DJ↕ |
✧Decor↕ | ⇄Trans- port↕ |
$Med. Income↕ |
%Wedding % Income↕ |
⌂Med. Home Price↕ |
⇣20% Down Payment↕ |
↔Down Pay- ment / Wedding↕ |
|
Rings = engagement ring + 2 wedding bands · Other items (cake, officiant, stationery, hair and makeup) included in Total but not shown separately
Where the money actually goes
National median figures for a 100-guest wedding. Toggle year to see how spending has shifted since 2015.
The down payment has become the bigger problem.
Wedding costs rose 37% over the decade (BLS CPI/PPI roll-forward). Median household income rose 47% (ACS). But median home values rose 76% (ACS). In every major US metro, saving for a down payment now dwarfs saving for a wedding.
How this index was built
This index is built to be reproducible. Every figure has a named source and the construction is documented below. Where industry data is used, it is named explicitly so readers can judge it. Journalists and researchers are welcome to contact Peter Norman for the underlying spreadsheets.
Last updated: May 12, 2026.
What changed in this edition
This release (May 2026) rebuilds the index on US federal statistical sources. Every figure now traces back to a named government series. Specifically:
- City cost multiplier is now Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parities (RPP), Services: Other sub-index. Replaces the previous C2ER + Numbeo composite. Pulled for 2015, 2020 and 2024 (the latest RPP year published as of release date).
- National base costs are now constructed by BLS CPI / PPI roll-forward. A 2015 anchor (calibrated against The Knot Real Weddings Study and BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey) is rolled forward to 2020 and 2025 using a named CPI or PPI subcomponent for each of the ten cost categories. Each category's series ID is listed below.
- Median household income now uses ACS Table B19013, 5-year estimates throughout (estimates ending 2015, 2020 and 2023).
- Median home values now use ACS Table B25077, 5-year estimates throughout. Redfin / Zillow / NAR are retained only as informal cross-checks.
- City coverage expanded from 20 to 50 metros (the top 50 US MSAs by Census Bureau 2024 population estimates, using current OMB CBSA delineations).
Still pending for a future refresh: median age at first marriage at MSA level (will be added via the existing US Marriage Age Report's PUMS pipeline, extended to all 50 metros), and an explicit FHFA House Price Index cross-check on the ACS B25077 home values.
Wedding cost: how the national base is built
We do not take the national wedding cost from any single industry survey. The 2015 base is calibrated to The Knot Real Weddings Study cross-checked against the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX Table 2400: Entertainment and personal care). That anchor is then rolled forward to 2020 and 2025 by applying the BLS CPI or PPI subcomponent growth rate for each of the ten cost categories independently.
The category → BLS series mapping used in this release:
- Catering: CPI Food away from home (CUUR0000SEFV). 2015→2025 = +49.3%
- Rings: CPI Jewelry and watches (CUUR0000SEAG). +27.0%
- Photo and Video: CPI Photographers and photo equipment (CUUR0000SERA02). +41.1%
- Florals: PPI Cut flowers and floriculture (WPU026). +35.6%
- Dress and Suit: CPI Apparel, all (CUUR0000SAA). +4.3%
- Music / DJ: no clean CPI proxy for live wedding music; held to the average of the catering, photo, venue and transport service-CPI factors. +47.2%
- Decor: CPI Household furnishings and operations (CUUR0000SAH3). +23.7%
- Transport: CPI Private transportation services (CUUR0000SETD). +59.4%
- Venue: CPI Admissions (CUUR0000SS62031). +39.1%
- Other (cake, officiant, HMU, stationery, favours, rehearsal dinner): held to historical share, ~11% of named-category sum each year.
National total 2015 = $29,248. 2025 = $40,161. Aggregate decade growth: +37%.
Limitation, named: the 2015 anchor remains derived from The Knot, which is a commercial survey. If the anchor is wrong, the roll-forward downstream is wrong. The roll-forward method is itself transparent and reproducible from the BLS series above.
Category cost breakdown
The ten cost categories:
- Venue: Ceremony and reception venue hire fees only, excluding catering minimums
- Catering: Food, non-alcoholic beverages, and bar package for 100 guests including service charges; excludes venue hire
- Rings: Engagement ring plus two wedding bands
- Photo and Video: Combined photography and videography packages
- Florals: Ceremony and reception floral arrangements including bridal party flowers
- Dress and Suit: Bridal gown plus accessories; groom/partner formal attire
- Music / DJ: Live band or DJ for the reception; does not include ceremony musicians
- Decor: Non-floral decorative items: linens, lighting, centrepieces, signage
- Transport: Wedding party vehicles (typically 2–4 cars or a limousine)
- Other (in Total only): Cake, officiant, hair and makeup, stationery and invitations, favours, rehearsal dinner contribution
City cost multiplier
National costs are scaled to each metro using the Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parities (RPP), specifically the Services: Other sub-index (LineCode 5 in BEA's MARPP table). RPP measures the metro-level price level for services other than rents, on a national index of 100, published annually for every US MSA. It is constructed from restricted-access BLS CPI price quotes and ACS housing rent data, and is the dataset the federal government uses to compare real personal income across regions.
Each metro’s 2015, 2020 and 2025 multiplier is the BEA RPP Services: Other value divided by 100. For the 2025 column we use the 2024 RPP, which is the most recent year published by BEA at time of release (RPP typically runs ~12 months behind the calendar year).
Note on visible flattening: RPP-derived multipliers vary across metros in a narrower range than the previous C2ER + Numbeo composite. NYC's Services-Other RPP for 2024 is 105.8 (5.8% above national); Birmingham is 96.7 (3.3% below). This is the honest answer for underlying service-price levels. Vendor-level "wedding premiums" beyond pure price levels (e.g. premium Manhattan venues vs outer-borough) are captured at the high end of the price distribution within a metro, not at the metro median this index reports.
Median household income
Metro-area median household income, US Census Bureau American Community Survey Table B19013 (Median Household Income in the Past 12 Months), 5-year estimates. 5-year estimates are used consistently across all three time points (2011–2015, 2016–2020, 2019–2023) because they have tighter margins of error at MSA level than 1-year estimates and are published consistently for all 50 metros in the sample.
Metro area definitions follow current OMB Core Based Statistical Area delineations. Where a metro's CBSA code changed between estimate years (e.g. Cleveland-Elyria, OH), the Census table for the corresponding code year is used and reconciled to the current code in the published data.
Median home values and 20% down payments
Metro median home values are from ACS Table B25077 (Median Value of Owner-Occupied Housing Units), 5-year estimates ending 2015, 2020 and 2023. This is owner-stated value, not sale price; the two diverge somewhat (owners typically overestimate by 5–10%), but B25077 is the federally-published metro-level series and is consistent across the panel.
The 20% down payment figure is a direct calculation: 20% of the ACS B25077 metro median. This threshold is used because it is the standard down payment required to avoid Private Mortgage Insurance on conventional loans in the US, making it the most financially meaningful savings target for first-time buyers.
Cross-check: Redfin Data Center and Zillow Research metro figures track within roughly 5–10% of B25077 for most metros, in both directions. Where you may see a divergence between this index and a Redfin/Zillow figure, it is most often because we are reporting owner-stated value (B25077) and Redfin is reporting trailing-12-month median sale price. We have used B25077 as the primary source for consistency with the rest of the federally-sourced data.
Future addition: a parallel FHFA House Price Index quarterly cross-check is planned for the next refresh, particularly to capture mid-year price movements that 5-year ACS estimates blur.
The 2020 COVID period
The wedding industry was among the most severely disrupted sectors of the US economy in 2020, with mass venue closures, postponements, and average guest counts cut roughly in half. This index does not adjust or smooth the 2020 figures. The 2020 column reflects what couples who married that year paid, with the BLS CPI subcomponents already reflecting any 2020-specific price moves (e.g. food-away-from-home actually rose in 2020 despite the broader disruption).
Readers comparing 2015 to 2020 should be aware that the apparent flat trend conceals a real 2016–2019 increase, a 2020 contraction, and a recovery through 2021–2024 that brought costs above pre-pandemic levels by 2023.
Limitations and caveats
2015 anchor dependency: Our 2020 and 2025 figures are constructed by rolling the 2015 anchor forward via BLS CPI/PPI subcomponent growth. This is a transparent method but assumes wedding-specific inflation tracks the broader subcomponent. Where wedding-specific inflation has diverged (e.g. premium venue hire likely outpacing general admissions CPI), our totals may understate the true increase.
Multiplier precision: BEA RPP measures the metro-wide price level. Within-metro variation is significant (a Manhattan venue costs far more than an outer-borough venue). Our figures represent a central estimate for the metro as a whole.
Guest count standardisation: All figures are normalised to a 100-guest event. Cultural variation in typical guest counts is not captured.
Music category proxy: No clean BLS price series exists for live wedding music. We use the average of the catering, photo, venue and transport CPI growth factors as a proxy. This is disclosed and may overstate or understate true wedding-music inflation.
RPP vintage: The most recent BEA RPP available at release is 2024. The 2025 column therefore uses the 2024 RPP as the multiplier, applied to a 2025 BLS-roll-forward national base.
Reproducibility
Every figure in this index can be reproduced from the federal series listed in the “What changed” box above and the per-category series IDs in the National Base section. Researchers may request the full city-by-city spreadsheet and the construction workings by contacting Peter Norman directly.
The index is updated annually. The next refresh will add MSA-level median age at first marriage (from ACS PUMS) and a quarterly FHFA HPI home-price cross-check.
Peter Norman Jewelers is a Los Angeles-based independent jeweller specialising in engagement rings and wedding jewellery. This index is an independent editorial research project, not sponsored by any of the data providers listed.