How Much Does a Wedding Cost in Texas? (2026 Data)

Texas is big enough that you would expect it to price like several different states. El Paso is closer to San Diego than to Houston. The drive from Amarillo to Brownsville is longer than the drive from Boston to Charleston.

So the thing that surprised us most in this data is how little that matters.

We pulled published pricing from 405 Texas wedding venues, the largest venue sample we have assembled for any state, and ten Texas metros came back with samples big enough to quote. Across all ten, the spread between the most and least expensive is 1.6x. In Louisiana, a state you can drive across in four hours, the spread between New Orleans and Lafayette is 2.8x.

Texas is enormous, and it charges roughly the same everywhere. That single fact should change how you shop for a venue here.

The short answer

A Texas wedding assembled from the median published price in each category comes to roughly $14,000 for 100 guests. That is a floor, not a forecast. It assumes you take the middle option everywhere, buy no bar package, rent nothing extra, and hire no planner.

Realistically, most Texas couples land between $25,000 and $40,000 all in, with the metros clustered much closer together than the state's geography would suggest.

What each vendor costs in Texas

These are starting packages and published rates taken from Texas vendor websites. The n is the number of vendors in each sample.

Category	25th percentile	Median	75th percentile	Sample
Venue (starting package)	$2,500	$3,500	$5,000	n=405
Photographer (starting package)	$1,500	$2,500	$3,500	n=183
Florist (starting package)	$2,000	$3,500	$6,000	n=50
Cake (per serving)	$5	$6	$9	n=88
DJ (starting package)	$800	$1,199	$1,900	n=51
Caterer (per guest)	$21	$27	$50	n=27

This is the first state where we can fill in all six rows. Most states we have measured publish enough data for two or three categories and go quiet on the rest, with caterers, florists and DJs usually the ones that stay dark. Texas has a real published sample in every category, which is a function of market size more than market culture.

Two honest caveats on that table.

The caterer sample is thin for a state this size. Twenty-seven vendors clears our bar but not by much, and the gap between the 25th percentile and the 75th is unusually wide, $21 to $50. Read it as a rough shape rather than a precise number, and note that the low end is heavily barbecue, which is a genuine and popular Texas wedding catering option rather than a compromise.

The venue table starts at $1,500. That floor is deliberate and it is the same one we use in every state, so these numbers are comparable across our other cost guides. There is a large and legitimate Texas market below it, covered further down.

For the national picture behind these categories, see our guides on what a wedding venue costs and what a wedding photographer costs.

Is $3,500 expensive?

Texas sits on the affordable side of the middle, which surprises people who assume Austin and Dallas prices describe the state.

Across the twelve states we have measured this way, published venue medians run from about $2,500 at the cheapest to about $4,800 at the most expensive. Texas at $3,500 sits just below the midpoint of that range, in the same band as Georgia and roughly $600 under Florida.

It is also the best-measured figure on this page. At 405 venues the Texas sample is nearly double the next largest, so this is the number we would defend hardest.

The regional split, or how little of one there is

This is the table that makes Texas unusual. Ten metros cleared a sample of ten or more published venue prices.

Metro	Median published venue package	Sample
Houston Area	$4,000	n=76
Waco & Central Texas	$4,000	n=11
Dallas & Fort Worth	$3,948	n=98
Texas Hill Country	$3,750	n=18
Austin Area	$3,500	n=47
Tyler & East Texas	$3,288	n=48
College Station & the Brazos Valley	$3,250	n=23
Abilene & San Angelo	$2,998	n=12
Corpus Christi & the Coastal Bend	$2,650	n=12
San Antonio Area	$2,500	n=18

Three things stand out.

The whole state fits in a $1,500 band. Houston to San Antonio is 200 miles and a $1,500 difference in venue median. New Orleans to Lafayette is 135 miles and a $4,800 difference. If you are used to the idea that driving out of the big metro saves serious money, Texas does not work that way, because the big metro was never charging much of a premium.

San Antonio is the cheapest major market in Texas. At $2,500 on a sample of 18, the seventh-largest city in the United States has the lowest published venue median of any Texas metro with real data, below rural East Texas and below Abilene. We do not have a confident explanation. Deep inventory, a long-established Hispanic wedding market with competitive mid-range pricing, and heavy competition from Hill Country venues an hour north are all plausible contributors.

Austin is cheaper than Dallas and Houston. At $3,500 against $3,948 and $4,000, the market with the state's most expensive housing has its third-most-expensive venues. Austin's reputation runs ahead of its venue pricing.

The other ten Texas metros returned samples too small to quote, from Galveston at n=6 down to Laredo at n=1. Those markets are covered in their individual venue guides, where we can talk about specific properties without pretending a median exists.

For the full regional picture, see Texas wedding venue costs by region.

The venues that publish under $1,500

Our venue table starts at $1,500. Below it sits a second Texas market that is real, large, and not the same product.

We found 179 Texas venues publishing starting prices under $1,500, with a median of $700 and a floor of $50. That is the biggest sub-floor market we have measured in any state, by a factor of nearly five.

These are community centers, chapels, small event rooms, historic halls, and elopement packages rented by the hour or in short blocks. The Eucalyptus Room in Gainesville is a micro venue at $265. Kemah Community Center runs $250 to $800. The Grove BCS in College Station runs $250 to $550. The Rhythm Room in Abilene runs $250 to $400. Longview Arboretum starts at $50 for the smallest use of the space.

These are genuinely good options, especially for a wedding under 50 guests. But renting a hall for three hours and booking a full-service ranch venue are different transactions, and averaging them together produces a number that describes neither. We count them separately and say so. If a small wedding is what you are planning, our guide to micro weddings is the better starting point.

The top of the market

Texas has a high ceiling, and it is concentrated in Houston.

Corinthian Houston publishes $35,000 to $100,000, the highest floor of any venue in our Texas data. Sandlewood Manor, also in the Houston area, spans $7,000 to $100,000 depending on package. White Oaks on the Bayou runs to $60,000, and Madera Estates runs $18,000 to $38,000.

Outside Houston the ceiling is still real. Parsons Castle in Waco publishes up to $75,000, the second-highest number in the state and an unlikely place to find it. Springdale Station in Austin runs to $50,000, The Hamptons Event Venue near Waxahachie to roughly $52,900, and Gardens at Old Town Helotes outside San Antonio spans $950 all the way to $40,000, which is one of the widest published ranges anywhere in our data.

That last pattern is worth noticing. A lot of Texas venues publish enormous ranges because the same property sells a Tuesday elopement and a 300-guest Saturday buyout. When you see a range like that, the number that matters is the one attached to your day of the week and your guest count, not the headline.

Putting a Texas budget together

Here is what 100 guests looks like if you take the median published price in each category.

Line item	Median-price build
Venue	$3,500
Catering (100 x $27)	$2,700
Photography	$2,500
Florals	$3,500
Cake (100 x $6)	$600
DJ	$1,199
Total	$13,999

This is the first state where every line comes from real Texas data rather than national norms.

What it is still missing is everything nobody publishes: bar service, attire, rings, stationery, transportation, hair and makeup, rentals, gratuities, and the dozen small line items that reliably add 20 to 30 percent. Budget $2,000 to $4,000 for bar alone. That is how a $14,000 median build becomes a $30,000 wedding. See our wedding budget breakdown for where the rest of it goes, and the budget spreadsheet template if you want to work your own numbers.

Where Texas is cheap and where it is not

Cake is a genuine bargain. At a $6 median per serving, 100 servings comes to $600. It is one of the few categories where the published Texas number sits clearly under the national conversation.

DJs are cheap and the market is deep. A $1,199 median with a 25th percentile of $800 is low, and with 51 vendors publishing, there is real choice. Texas has a functioning, transparent, competitive DJ market, which is not something we can say about most states, where DJs rarely put a number online at all. Our DJ versus band comparison covers the tradeoff.

Florals are not cheap. A $3,500 median with a 75th percentile of $6,000 puts Texas near the top of the states we have measured. Texas florists price wedding minimums rather than individual arrangements, which pushes the published figure up.

Photography is mid-market and the sample is excellent. At $2,500 across 183 photographers, this is squarely mid-market for the region. The 25th percentile of $1,500 is where the value is.

The venue is not the whole decision here, and in some markets it is. Where all-inclusive venues dominate, the venue number already contains the catering, bar and DJ, so choosing it is most of the budget in one move. Across most of Texas the venue is just the venue, which means your $3,500 median venue is genuinely the first of six decisions rather than most of them. Houston is the notable exception, and its guide covers that. Our venue checklist and venue tour questions are built for exactly this.

What actually moves a Texas budget

Given how flat the geography is, the levers that matter here are different from other states.

The month moves more than the metro. A 1.6x spread across ten metros is smaller than the gap between an October Saturday and a July one at the same venue. In most states we tell couples to consider driving further out. In Texas, consider moving the date instead. See the best months to get married in Texas.

The day of the week moves a lot. Texas venues publish some of the widest day-dependent ranges we have seen. A Friday or Sunday is frequently a different price tier rather than a small discount. Our guide to Sunday and weekday savings covers how much to expect.

Guest count moves everything. With catering at $27 a head and cake at $6 a serving, every 25 guests is roughly another $825 before bar. See how many wedding guests you can actually afford.

Summer is the real discount. July and August are the softest months in Texas, and the reason is obvious to anyone who has stood outside in them. If you can work an evening ceremony, planning around the heat is the single biggest saving available in this state.

How we built these numbers

We cataloged Texas wedding vendors across 20 metros, crawled their websites, and used a language model to pull structured pricing out of the free text they publish. Every figure on this page comes from a price a vendor put on their own website. Nothing is estimated, averaged from national surveys, or inferred.

That method has a known bias worth stating: vendors who publish prices are not a random sample of vendors. Publishing a number correlates with being mid-market and transparent. The very top of the market almost never publishes, which means our medians likely sit slightly below the true center of each category. Read them as a well-sourced floor.

We also audited where each vendor actually is before running these numbers, rather than trusting the city we searched to find them. That moved 64 Texas vendors into the correct metro, which matters most for the regional table above.

Browse the vendors behind these numbers

Every figure on this page comes from vendors in our Texas directory. You can see them market by market, with the same published pricing:

• Texas wedding venues
• Texas wedding photographers
• Texas wedding florists
• Texas wedding caterers
• Texas wedding cakes
• Texas wedding DJs

Or tell us what you are planning and we will match you against Texas vendors whose published pricing fits your budget.