How much does a wedding cost?
It is a truth universally acknowledged that weddings in this day and age tend to be pretty expensive. (Thanks, wedding industrial complex.) But when it comes to the average cost of a wedding in 2019, exactly what the price tag might be varies from state to state. Curious about how much a wedding costs in your own state? Good news: Market research firm the Wedding Report exists specifically to track and forecast, among other wedding-related things, spending within the wedding industry — and happily, one of the many ways you can examine their data and analysis is by state.
The fewest number of states average out in this bracket — just nine — keep their wedding under $20k on average. A lot of that is likely due to cost of living in those states being a bit more affordable than it might be in other geographic areas; with the exception of two outliers — Idaho and New Mexico — all nine states are located in the South.
Meanwhile, the majority of states — 18 — fall in the $20k-to-$25k price point. They’re spread out across the country pretty well, although they tend to be clustered in the South, Midwest, and Southwest.
12 states keep things in the $25k-to-$30k range. These states are largely in the West, Midwest, and Pacific Northwest; most of them are landlocked, rather than coastal.
Weddings in coastal states — typically those in New England in the Northeast and in California in the West, or 12 states in total — tend to have the highest average price tags. It makes sense that the state with the single highest average wedding cost would be Hawaii; as Nerdwallet noted in 2018, the fact that Hawaii is an island means that there are limited resources available directly within the state itself. A lot of things have to be flown in from the mainland, which can up the costs considerably.
- Mississippi: $15,260
- Alabama: $17,216
- Arkansas: $17,43
- Kentucky: $17,607
- West Virginia: $18,228
- Tennessee: $18,346
- New Mexico: $18,470
- Louisiana: $19,681
- Idaho: $19,925
- South Carolina: $20,047
- Missouri: $20,058
- North Carolina: $20,416
- Montana: $20,706
- Florida: $20,933
- Michigan: $20,942
- Indiana: $21,004
- Oklahoma: $21,032
- Ohio: $21,478
- Arizona: $21,605
- Georgia: $21,666
- Nevada: $21,879
- Kansas: $22,407
- South Dakota: $22,896
- Iowa: $23,426
- Nebraska: $23,488
- Wisconsin: $23,680
- Texas: $24,520
- Illinois: $25,918
- Wyoming: $26,017
- Oregon: $26,175
- Maine: $26,211
- North Dakota: $26,774
- Utah: $27,095
- Minnesota: $27,332
- Colorado: $27,646
- Delaware: $28,067
- Pennsylvania: $28,827
- Virginia: $29,196
- Washington State: $29,511
- Vermont: $30,257
- Rhode Island: $30,861
- California: $31,437
- New Hampshire: $33,612
- Maryland: $33,755
- Alaska: $34,298
- New York: $34,315
- Connecticut: $35,702
- Massachusetts: $35,966
- Washington, DC: $36,082
- New Jersey: $36,943
- Hawaii: $37,827
