What does a wedding in Belgium cost?

Why an average does not help your budget

An average adds a Wednesday-morning wedding at the town hall to a seated dinner for a hundred and twenty guests. That number says nothing about your day. The guest count drives the big items. Food, drinks and sometimes the room grow per person. Photographer, clothes, rings and the registrar stay roughly the same, whether forty or ninety people come.

So you split every quote in two. A fixed amount, and a price per guest. Children count separately when the caterer has a children's price. Who pays is agreed before you sign: the two of you, your parents, or each a part. Without that agreement a total is a wish, not a budget.

Ringske fills in no default amount and no percentage. A split without a source would be an American scheme pretending to be yours. The tool on wedding budget calculates with what you enter. This guide says which items have a public tariff, and which you only fill with quotes.

The town hall

The civil marriage has no national tariff. Each town decides whether the ceremony is free, and what a Saturday or a special room costs. The declaration and the ceremony are not the same thing either. Below are amounts the city or the town publishes itself, as examples. Yours may ask something else. Read its fee regulation before you fix a date.

In Ghent the marriage declaration is free, the city of Ghent writes. For a ceremonial wedding, a wedding at another location or the marriage booklet the city does charge, payable at the desk when you file. Ghent publishes that amount on the page about locations and formulas, not on the declaration page. Without copying a figure that is not on the page cited here: ask the city, and put it under "civil wedding", not under the party venue.

Leuven publishes two tariffs on Leuven's site. A wedding on Wednesday costs €25. On Friday or Saturday it costs €70. You can pay cash or by card. If one of you does not speak Dutch, you bring a sworn interpreter, and you pay them yourself. The interpreter is not in the town's tariff.

The City of Brussels has two formulas, on the City of Brussels site. The simple one costs €50: you choose the date (Friday or Saturday), the city sets the time, the ceremony lasts 15 minutes and you are received in front of the Lion's Staircase on the Grand-Place. The courtyard formula costs €300, which is €50 plus a €250 supplement: you choose date and time, the ceremony lasts 20 minutes, in the courtyard of the town hall. The marriage booklet costs €25 and is included in both. It is not compulsory. Weddings are on Friday and Saturday. The city writes that the extras depend on availability and that there is no refund if an event on the Grand-Place gets in the way.

Etterbeek fixed the amounts in a fee regulation that takes effect on 1 January 2026 and runs until 31 December 2031, unless the council changes it. The tariffs are indexed every year. The regulation itself says: Monday, Wednesday and Thursday morning €85, Friday morning €125, the last Friday afternoon of the month €150, Saturday morning €290. Tuesday morning is exempt, as is a wedding of a member of staff of the municipality or the public social-welfare centre. People with an increased health-insurance allowance (the RVT status) pay less: €77, €113, €135 and €260 for those same slots. A live stream through an app costs €15, or €13.50 with RVT. Source: Etterbeek's regulation.

Do not line these figures up as if "a civil wedding in Belgium costs between €0 and €300". That is the spread of four published regulations, not a national range. A Tuesday in Etterbeek is free. A Saturday in the Brussels courtyard is €300. Your town may sit nowhere in between. The marriage declaration separates the legal window. When you book the appointment is in the 2027 timeline.

The notary, if you want a contract

A marriage contract is not required. If you do not sign one, the statutory community regime applies automatically, belgium.be writes. That costs nothing at the notary. The City of Brussels explains on its wedding page what that regime means in practice: what you acquire during the marriage is joint; what you already had, or receive by gift or inheritance, stays your own. That is a summary of that page, not advice. For your situation the notary is the right person.

If you do want a contract, the notary's fee is capped by law. In the consolidated tariff decree that notaris.be publishes (30 June 2026), the marriage contract says: minimum €8.55, maximum €195. The fee for the contract and for a counter-letter together may not exceed €195. Changing the matrimonial regime, with or without a contribution, is listed at €222. If that change includes a liquidation and division of the joint estate, a percentage of the gross assets applies, not that €222. Source: the tariff decree on notaris.be.

That cap is the fee, not the whole invoice. The federation of notaries writes on notaire.be that for an ordinary marriage contract, without a transfer of real estate, you can count on €400 to €600. What it will be in your case, you ask the notary in advance. That range is the federation's estimate, not a second legal tariff. A contract with a gift or with property falls outside it and costs more.

Have the conversation before the wedding. notaris.be writes that a marriage contract before the wedding date works out cheaper than one afterwards, because the notary then has more formalities. The notary registers the contract in the central register. The town no longer needs a certificate. That last point is on Vlaanderen.be, among the declaration documents.

Papers for use abroad

Most couples who marry in Belgium and stay here pay no apostille. It comes up when a foreign authority wants to see a Belgian document, or when a foreign document has to be usable in Belgium. The FPS Foreign Affairs writes that since 1 August 2026 the fee is €25 per legalisation or apostille, per document. At the counters you can only pay electronically. Since 1 May 2018 apostilles are issued only electronically. Source: the FPS Foreign Affairs, updated on 11 August 2026.

Count €25 each, not once for the whole file. A marriage certificate and a birth certificate are two documents. Whether you need the step depends on the country. The FPS has a simulator for that. Use it, instead of ordering the apostille "just in case".

Music

Whether you pay Unisono depends on where the music plays and who already holds the licence. The tariff list for towns says music in the private sphere needs no licence, and does once you play it in a public place. A party in the living room is not a DJ in a hired hall.

That same list publishes, for 2026, tariff 53, authors' rights for wedding halls: background music during ceremonies, through audio equipment, €86.30 a year, excluding 6 percent VAT. A temporary operation of at most one quarter pays half that annual tariff, at most one semester three quarters. New customers get a one-off 10 percent reduction on this tariff in their first year. Source: Unisono's tariff list. Read this as the hall's licence for background music at ceremonies, not as the price of your DJ or band. Unisono publishes no flat amount "per wedding party".

If the music plays from a sound source (a DJ, a CD, the radio or streaming), Unisono says a neighbouring-rights fee for artists, musicians and producers is always due. That fee is set by law and does not disappear because the music is said to be royalty-free. You pay authors' rights when the repertoire is protected. The price depends on parameters, including the fee of the artist or DJ, the number of days and the floor area. Ask the venue whether its contract covers your evening. If it does not, you request a licence yourself, at least five days before the music is used. Without a quote from Unisono for your actual evening, no extra number belongs here.

Venue, food, photos, clothes and the rest

For the party venue, the caterer, drinks, photographer, video, clothes, hair and makeup, rings, flowers, hired kit, print, transport, rooms and thank-you gifts, no Belgian public authority publishes a range I can honestly copy here. Blogs and magazines fill that gap with round numbers. Those figures have no method, no year and no sample you can check. They are not on this page.

Budget those items in five steps. First the headcount. Finish the guest list down to the invitation: how many adults, how many children, who comes to which moment. Someone who only comes to the reception does not count for the dinner.

Then ask at least three quotes for the items that carry the total: venue, food, drinks, photographer. Write down what is included. VAT or not. Children. Dietary needs. Hours past the agreed end. Cutting the cake. A minimum number of guests. A quote that does not say this cannot be compared with one that does.

Split each quote into fixed and per guest, and put them in the wedding budget. Move the guest count up and down. You see which item grows and which stays put. That is more useful than a national average, because they are your quotes.

On every expense, note when the deposit and the balance are due. The last month before the wedding is expensive if every balance lands together. Also agree who pays which invoice, before the first payment leaves. The wedding checklist therefore puts "set the budget, and who pays what" at the front, more than a year before the date.

The items you fill this way are the same as in Ringske: venue, food, drinks and staff, photographer and video, music and DJ, clothes, hair and makeup, rings, flowers and decoration, hired things, print, transport, the civil wedding, accommodation, thank-you gifts, extras. Leaving one empty is more honest than an invented starting amount.

What the planner costs is a different question

"What does a wedding cost" and "what does Ringske cost" are two searches. Planning in Ringske is free: guest list, budget, task list and the wedding site for as long as it is not online. The one-off amounts to publish the site are on the pricing page, not on this page, so a price change only has to be right in one place. There is no cost per guest and no subscription.