About VowBudget
A small, free planner that answers one question first: where does a wedding budget actually go?
What VowBudget is
VowBudget turns a total budget and a guest count into a category-by-category spending plan. Everything runs in your browser: no account, no storage, no paid services. The plan can be shared as a link that encodes the numbers.
Where the percentages come from
The default split is a set of midpoint estimates distilled from publicly reported wedding-cost studies, including Zola's annual reports and The Knot's Real Weddings study (2024–2026 reporting years). Studies converge on the same shape: venue and catering take roughly 60% of a typical budget, photography around 9%, attire, flowers and entertainment in the mid-single digits, and everything else the remainder.
These are heuristics, not a contract. A wedding in a small town with 40 guests splits differently from a 200-guest city wedding. That is why every category is adjustable, and why the plan flags categories that sit far from the typical split rather than telling you what is right.
What we do not claim
- No "average wedding cost" target: averages are context-free and we do not push one at you.
- No financial advice: verify every number with real vendors before signing anything.
- No account, no email capture, no tracking beyond what the hosting platform logs by default.
- No paid placements: nothing on this site is for sale, and no vendor pays us.
Key sources
- Zola — 2026 Wedding Trends: First Look Report
- Zola — Average Cost of Weddings
- The Knot — How many couples go over budget
- pix.wedding — How much does a wedding cost in 2026
For machines
This site is agent-ready: llms.txt for a quick map, /api/plan for the same plan as JSON, and an AI resource catalog. The API is read-only and bounded.