Wedding budgets rooted in real data

How the engine works

Your six onboarding answers (city, guest count, date, cultural traditions, priorities, budget target) feed through an 11-layer pipeline. Each layer adds precision the one before it could not.

1. Resolve items — filter the 520+ item catalog by market, overlays, and priorities.
2. Multipliers — apply city cost index, season, day-of-week.
3. Allocate — distribute total budget across 16 active categories based on priorities.
4. Calculate — per-item estimates using the right pricing model (per-person, per-hour, flat, per-table).
5. Service charge — 18-25% added automatically on US F&B; skipped in EU.
6. Tax — VAT (EU, 5-25% by country) or sales tax (US, 0-9.5% by state).
7. Bundles — reconcile all-inclusive venue packages so nothing is double-counted.
8. Hidden costs — surface warnings: KODA fees, overtime, vendor meals, postage, tips.
9. ML pricing — apply learned adjustments from community data (optional).
10. Benchmarks — attach percentile bands so you see where each item sits vs comparable weddings.
11. Risk score — overall budget feasibility rating with specific flagged factors.

Why we built this

Every existing wedding budget tool falls into one of two failure modes: a generic spreadsheet that ignores where you live, or a hand-crafted planner that costs thousands. Neither serves the couple who wants a realistic, honest number in under two minutes — and the freedom to explore how changing the city, the guest count, or the cultural traditions moves the budget.

Linden is the tool I wished existed when I planned my own wedding.

Where we stand on AI

The budget engine is deterministic, not AI. Same inputs produce the same numbers — every time, forever. The copilot that answers your questions ("why is this number so high?", "what can I cut to save €3,000?") uses AI, and is explicit about what it can and can't tell you. We think this separation matters: the engine must be reliable; the copilot can be helpful.

Data & privacy

Your budget, guest list, and vendor information are yours. We use pseudonymized, aggregated data to improve pricing accuracy for everyone — never to identify couples individually. Full details in our privacy policy.