Tracking Wedding Expenses in ExpenseBot
ExpenseBot has a dedicated wedding flow that solves two problems generic expense trackers don't:
- Category breakdown, not just a grand total. Couples don't argue about whether to spend on a wedding — they argue about what to cut. Five pre-built tags split the budget the way wedding planners do.
- Who paid for what, without losing the category. You keep the category tag AND record the payer (Bride / Groom / Bride's Family / etc.) in a separate Notes column, so budget totals still roll up cleanly.
Step 1 — Create the 5-tag bundle
- Go to Settings → Manage Tags
- Click ✨ Create a Tag with AI
- Type something like: "wedding expenses — venue, florist, catering, photographer, dress, honeymoon"
- The wizard detects wedding intent and offers to create five tags automatically:
- Wedding – Attire & Beauty — gown, tux, alterations, hair, makeup, jewelry
- Wedding – Venue & Catering — venue rental, caterer, bar service, cake, rentals
- Wedding – Vendors — photographer, videographer, DJ, band, florist, officiant, planner, transportation
- Wedding – Stationery & Gifts — invitations, save-the-dates, favors, bridesmaid/groomsmen gifts
- Wedding – Honeymoon — flights, hotels, resorts, excursions, rental car
- Hit Save — every future receipt sorts itself automatically. Existing receipts from the last 90 days are retroactively tagged. You'll see toasts like "Applied Venue & Catering to 12 existing receipts."
Step 2 — Track who paid (two options)
Option A — type it in the subject line (works for anyone):
When forwarding a receipt, add paidby:bride to the subject line. Accepted labels: bride, groom, bride's family, groom's family, or any custom text.
Subject: Fwd: florist invoice paidby:bride's family
ExpenseBot stamps "Paid by Bride's Family" into the Notes column (Column L). The category tag in Column K is untouched, so budget totals still roll up correctly.
Option B — forward from a verified forwarding email (added in Settings → Forwarding Addresses):
Add your partner's / parent's / fiancé's email under Settings → Forwarding Addresses. When you add it during the wedding signup wizard, you can pick a chip label (Bride / Groom / Mom (Bride) / Mom (Groom) / Dad (Bride) / Dad (Groom) / Wedding Planner / etc.) so receipts they forward get tagged "Paid by Mom (Bride)" — not the awkward titleCase of their email local-part. Set it up once, no subject-line typing ever again.
⚠️ Explicit
paidby:in the subject always works, on any receipt — it's a deliberate user command. Auto-attribution from a verified forwarding email fires when you have the wedding role active OR when the receipt resolves to a Wedding – tag, so a non-wedding user's Starbucks receipt forwarded frombride@gmail.comwon't accidentally get "Paid by Bride" stamped on it.
Step 3 — Run your reports
Once you're tagged for wedding tracking, a dedicated report appears on My Reports → Create A Report:
- Wedding Budget Report — budget vs actuals by vendor category, with top vendors per tag, a deposit/final payment pairing (catches the same vendor charged twice — once for deposit, once for final balance), a monthly burn chart oriented around your wedding date, and a Paid-By split flagging who over- or under-paid vs the ratio you set (50/50, 60/40, etc.). Set your total wedding budget once and the report calculates remaining / % used on every run.
You can still run the generic tag-based reports anytime:
- Full budget by category: My Reports → Create Report → Report by Tag → select all five "Wedding –" tags
- Single category: Report by Tag → "Wedding – Vendors" (or any one category)
- Who paid what: Open the main sheet, filter Column L (Notes) for "Paid by Bride" / "Paid by Groom" / etc.
Why five categories instead of one?
One "Wedding" tag gives you "$43,000 spent" — useful for nobody. Five tags let you actually make trade-offs: "Can we spend less on flowers and more on the photographer?" We tested against 20+ wedding planning resources and found these five categories cover 95%+ of wedding receipts without ambiguity. Every vendor type belongs in exactly one bucket.
Why does Paid-By go in Notes, not in the tag?
Column K holds one tag per receipt. If "Bride" were a tag, every receipt tagged "Bride" would stop counting toward "Wedding – Attire & Beauty" — breaking the budget view. Notes is additive: category + payer can both be true at the same time.
What if I already have a "Wedding" tag?
No problem. The wizard only creates tags you don't already have. Your existing tag keeps working alongside the new ones.
What if the AI misses a receipt?
Add TAG:Wedding – Venue & Catering (or any specific tag name) to the forwarding subject — this overrides AI matching. Useful for cash payments or receipts with generic merchant names.
Works for any life event
The same category-split approach works for:
- Home renovation — contractor, materials, appliances
- Baby expenses — nursery, medical, gear
- Moving costs — movers, storage, furniture
- Anniversary trip — hotel, restaurant, activity
For wedding-specific features (5-tag bundle, Paid-By attribution), the wizard only triggers when it detects wedding intent in your description.