Built for the way South Asian wedding budgets actually work
The average UK South Asian wedding costs between £40,000 and £120,000, with the upper end of that range climbing past £200,000 once you factor in outfits, jewellery, and a destination element. That money flows in unpredictable ways: a deposit to the venue twelve months out, a first-instalment payment to the photographer at six months, a final payment to the caterer the week before, and dozens of smaller payments to mehndi artists, decorators, dhol players, and outfit boutiques along the way. Generic wedding budget tools assume one couple paying for everything in one currency — which is almost never how a South Asian wedding gets paid for. Baraat's budget tracker assumes the opposite: multiple contributors, multiple categories, multiple payment dates, and currencies that match where the money is actually moving.
Categories that match the way you're actually spending
When you create a wedding on Baraat, your budget is pre-seeded with the categories that matter for South Asian weddings: venue and catering, photography and video, decor and florals, outfits and jewellery (bride), outfits and jewellery (groom), mehndi and beauty, music and entertainment, transport, cards and invitations, mithai and favours, honeymoon, and contingency. You can rename any category, add new ones, and move sub-items between them. Each category shows planned spend versus actual spend, so you can see at a glance where you're over and where you have room to flex.
Track payments, not just totals
Most budget tools let you record one number per vendor — what they cost. That's not how vendor payments work. A typical UK wedding photographer might take a £500 deposit at booking, a 50% interim payment six months out, and the balance one month before the wedding. A caterer might invoice quarterly. A decorator might want full payment two weeks before. Baraat lets you split each line item into payments, mark each payment as scheduled, paid, or overdue, and roll everything up into a monthly cashflow view that tells you what's coming out of your account when. This is the single feature that couples tell us removed the most stress from their planning.
Multi-currency, multi-contributor
A British-Indian wedding might have outfits paid for in INR from Delhi, jewellery paid for in AED from Dubai, and the venue paid for in GBP from London. Baraat handles all three. Every line item can be priced in its native currency, and the budget rolls up into your home currency using a current exchange rate. You can also assign each category or line item to a contributor — the bride's family, the groom's family, the couple themselves, a grandparent — so you can see at any moment who has paid for what.
Honest, ongoing visibility
The biggest budget mistake on most weddings is the same one: thinking the total is the total. It almost never is. Decor scope creeps. Guest counts grow. The bride's outfit gets a custom blouse. The groom's family adds a Mehndi night. Baraat's budget tracker is designed to make this drift visible the moment it happens, not three months later when the deposits are non-refundable. Every change updates the totals in real time. Every overspend triggers a gentle warning. The category overview is always one tap away. You won't end up in a difficult conversation about money two weeks before the wedding — because the numbers will have been honest with you the whole way through.
What's inside
Built to handle the full job.
Pre-seeded categories
Twelve South Asian wedding spend categories, ready to customise.
Payment scheduling
Track deposits, interim payments, and final balances per vendor.
Multi-currency
Price line items in INR, AED, USD, GBP, and more — auto-converted to your home currency.
Multi-contributor
Assign categories to bride's family, groom's family, the couple, or others.
Cashflow view
See what's due in the next 30, 60, and 90 days at a glance.
Realtime variance
Planned vs actual spend per category, with overspend warnings.
In real weddings
How couples are using it.
A £85,000 wedding with three sets of contributors
The bride's parents are funding the venue and catering, the groom's parents are funding photography and decor, and the couple is paying for outfits and the honeymoon. Each contributor sees their own categories and totals; the couple sees the master roll-up — and nobody is left guessing what the others are spending.
Outfits sourced across Delhi, Dubai, and London
The bridal lehenga is being made in Delhi (₹3.2 lakh), the kundan jewellery is bought in Dubai (AED 18,000), and the groom's sherwani is from a Wembley boutique (£2,400). Baraat tracks each in its native currency and rolls them all into the GBP master total without you doing any maths.
A Walima venue paid in three instalments
The Walima venue costs £24,000, broken into a £6,000 deposit at booking, £12,000 at the 6-month mark, and £6,000 the week of the wedding. Baraat tracks all three as separate payments, alerts you a week before each one is due, and updates your cashflow view accordingly.
Frequently asked