How winners are chosen.

The Vow Awards uses a two-stage process that combines the objectivity of AI and the taste of the industry's most experienced wedding professionals. Every stage is transparent and every winner is independently verifiable.  We are not affiliated with magazines, events, suppliers or sponsors who pressure us to choose certain winners.  We are completely independent to assure that our awards are given as fair as possible.  Our entry fees are extremely low to allow everyone to enter.  

1. 01

   AI screening

   Every submission is scored by our AI model on category-specific criteria — composition, storytelling, emotion, technical craft, editing — using the exact rubric each category's judges publish. The AI produces a ranked shortlist and flags category-fit failures.

   • Per-category rubric JSON
   • AI-generated score + rank
   • Category-fit disqualification flag
2. 02

   Human review

   Shortlisted entries are round-robin assigned to a rotating panel of veteran wedding filmmakers, photographers and other professionals. Each judge scores across a 5-dimension weighted rubric. Ties at the winner boundary trigger a dedicated tiebreak review before results publish.

   • 5-dimension weighted rubric
   • Round-robin judge assignment
   • Manual tiebreak resolution
3. 03

   Publish & verify

   Winners and runners-up are announced mid-month. Each winner receives a signed certificate (PDF) and a shareable badge (PNG). Every certificate carries a unique VOW-YYYYMM-XXXXXX number that anyone can look up on our public verification page.

   • Signed PDF certificate
   • Shareable PNG badge
   • Public /verify lookup