Every number on Mazie Says comes from a named study, printed with its scope and its sample size. We show the average and the median side by side, because the gap between them is the story. Derived figures show their math. Gaps stay gaps. And no vendor pays for any of it.
Almost every figure on this site traces back to one of two studies, and they are built differently. The Knot's 2026 Real Weddings Study reports on 10,474 couples married in 2025. It is a survey: couples report what they hired and what they spent, category by category. Its vendor averages are averages among couples who hired that vendor, and its totals cover the ceremony and reception; the engagement ring, the rehearsal dinner and the honeymoon are counted separately, and our pages say so wherever that matters.
The Wedding Report's 2025 statistics are compiled market data rather than a survey of couples, and they publish a median alongside the average. In most New England states its average runs lower than The Knot's; in a couple of states it runs higher. The two series disagree because they count different couples, and neither is simply wrong.
A single blended number would be tidier and less true. So every state page prints both averages and the median, each labeled with its study, and lets you see the spread for yourself.
The average adds up every wedding and divides by the count, so a minority of very large weddings pulls it up. The median is the middle wedding: half of couples spend less, half spend more. In Vermont, the averages are $47,000 and $39,616 depending on the study, while the median is $19,462. That spread is not an error. It is the shape of the market, and it is why our checker plans from the median and checks against the averages, not the other way round.
Every figure is printed with its scope: national, state, city, or one named venue. A Massachusetts venue average is never dressed up as a Boston figure. Where no Boston median is published, the Boston page says so and uses the state median, labeled as a state figure.
Some of our most useful numbers are arithmetic, and they are labeled as derived, with the math shown in that page's sources. The tented build-out stack adds the published rental lines for a 100-guest setup, line by line, and lands at $11,750 to $27,800 before food or drink. The all-in ranges on the state pages work the same way: the commonly missed lines, $3,000 to $6,500 of them, added to the headline figure so you can see what a wedding planned at that number actually needs.
When the only evidence is a single source, the page says so. A luxury planner's benchmarks are printed as one planner's benchmarks. One documented backyard costing is printed as one documented costing. One venue's micro-wedding prices are that venue's prices. None of them is ever renamed an average.
Where no figure exists, the page prints the gap. No study publishes a Newport average, so the Newport page leads with a clearly labeled planner benchmark instead. No source publishes a barn-only average, so the barn page works from state venue averages and the cost of each line a bare barn leaves out. A missing number is information. Inventing one would be worse than useless.
Every cost page is stamped with the month its numbers were checked; right now the stamp says November 2026. The Knot republishes its study each February, and every page is refreshed against the new study then. Mid-year, the pages are checked again against The Wedding Report's latest figures, so no page runs on a study more than a season old without a second look.
If you want to hear about a change rather than come back and look for it, each cost page carries a signup at the bottom: leave an email and we send one short note when that page's numbers are refreshed. The Massachusetts page shows how it works.
The studies are the baseline, and they are annual. The sharper layer, once it exists, is real quotes. When couples run a vendor quote through our quote checker and choose to share it, we keep only the planning facts: the category, the area, the date and the line items. Names and identifiers are stripped at the door.
Aggregates from shared quotes will nudge the published ranges, never replace the studies underneath them. Nothing is published from a category until it has enough samples to be honest, about five, and when an aggregate does appear it prints its sample size next to the number. Quote data is never sold, and it is never shown per vendor.
Vendors never pay for placement, ranking or inclusion on Mazie Says, and they never will. There are no ads and no sponsored listings. Couples pay for the planning tier, and that is the whole business model: the site works for the people planning the wedding, not the people selling to them.
Two smaller rules follow from the same principle. Availability on a vendor card is shown only when it has actually been checked for a couple's date, never invented to fill a field. And where we record a vendor's Google rating, we record it as a fact, with the date we checked it. The reviews themselves stay on Google, in the reviewers' own words.
Averages describe a market. Breakdowns describe a wedding. We are collecting itemized post-wedding breakdowns from real couples under strict rules: the spend must be itemized, the town and the guest count stated, and the wedding in 2024 or later. We publish no vendor names and no couple names.
Until enough verified breakdowns are in hand for a state, its page carries no breakdown section at all. A small sample dressed up as data would break the rule this page exists to state, so the sections appear when the data clears the bar, and not before.
Mazie Says is built by Jenna Rodrigues, who spent 10 years as a New England wedding photographer and planned her own wedding as a past bride. A decade of watching couples do this math the hard way, at kitchen tables across the region, is roughly the product brief. You can meet the founder on the homepage.
The six state pages are the clearest example: two studies, a median, the missed lines and the regional picture, on one page each.
The same method runs the tented, backyard, micro wedding and barn pages, the Boston, Cape Cod and Newport pages, and the needs list, which prices every line a wedding type requires.
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Take the quizThis page describes the method behind the published cost pages of this site, checked November 2026, and the studies they cite: The Knot's 2026 Real Weddings Study (10,474 couples married in 2025) and The Wedding Report's 2025 market statistics, together with the Mazie Says research audit of wedding spending from the last five years. If a claim here ever stops being true of the cost pages, the cost pages win and this page gets corrected.
Mazie Says is a planning tool, not a vendor. No vendor pays for placement here, ever.