Terms of Use and Privacy Notice

Terms of Use

Vowspan is an early-stage beta service. We are not a venue, wedding planner, booking agent, marketplace, or representative of any venue.

You must be at least 18 years old to submit a shortlist request.

Each partner answers a short set of questions separately. We use those answers to understand your shared preferences and prepare a shortlist. For the MVP, recommendations are prepared manually.

We aim to send three venue recommendations within one business day after payment for a completed shortlist request is confirmed. A business day means Monday to Friday, excluding South African public holidays. Requests received after 5:00 PM South African Standard Time may be treated as received on the next business day. This is a service target, not a guaranteed deadline.

Venue recommendations may use information gathered from official venue websites and other publicly available sources. Unless clearly stated, Vowspan is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of any recommended venue.

Venue details may be incomplete, outdated, or unverified. You must confirm availability, capacity, pricing, package inclusions, restrictions, and booking terms directly with the venue before relying on them or making payment.

By submitting, you agree that Vowspan may contact relevant venues using only the wedding requirements needed to check pricing and suitability. These may include your preferred date, guest count, area, venue budget and style preferences. We contact venues as Vowspan. Your names, email addresses, phone numbers and other contact details stay private. We do not forward your free text notes or identifying details to venues.

We record each partner's acceptance of the current terms before enabling venue enquiries for a new request. Existing requests and earlier refusals are not automatically opted in. You can withdraw permission for future venue enquiries by contacting us.

Private invite and recovery links should only be shared with your partner or someone you trust. These links may grant access to your shared session, even though Vowspan does not require an account.

Price, payment and cancellation

The founding offer costs R299 once-off for a manually researched shortlist of three Western Cape venue options based on both partners' submitted preferences. The fee pays for the research and shortlist service; it does not reserve a venue, confirm availability, or include any venue charge.

Payment is processed through Yoco's hosted checkout. Vowspan does not receive or store your full card or bank-account details. We only begin fulfilment after the payment provider confirms the payment status and amount.

You keep any cancellation, cooling-off, refund, and other consumer rights that apply under South African law. To request cancellation or a refund, contact sean.hoenderdos@gmail.com. Approved refunds are returned through the original payment method where practical.

Important limitations

To the extent permitted by law, Vowspan is not responsible for losses arising from venue acts or omissions, changes in venue information, availability, pricing, services, or your decision to contact or book a venue. Nothing in these terms excludes or limits any right or liability that cannot lawfully be excluded.

We may change, suspend, limit, or discontinue the beta service. We may also decline a request where we do not have enough reliable information to prepare a useful shortlist.

Cookies and analytics

We use necessary browser storage to support the service and remember your privacy choices. Our participant cookies support your access to the service and expire after 120 days. We do not use them for advertising.

We use optional analytics to improve Vowspan and understand which marketing helps couples find us. With your permission, we link information about how you found us to your enquiry and payment. We don’t send your name, contact details or wedding preferences to Google Analytics. You can use our service without accepting analytics.

We remember your choice for up to 180 days. A secure, necessary consent cookie identifies this browser to our server; it is not available to page scripts. We store a hash of its random value and a versioned record of your choice, its scope, and when it was made and expires. The cookie also expires within 180 days. An expired permission cannot authorize optional analytics without a new choice.

Your choice applies to this browser. On a verified private page, you choose only for your own participant role. One partner cannot consent for the other, and switching participant roles requires a fresh choice for the returning role. Earlier public-page-only choices do not authorize the expanded use described here.

With permission at the point of linking, we may connect approved campaign labels from a consenting visit to your enquiry and payment and record limited progress milestones. We do not fill in earlier missing information retrospectively or replay a visit made before consent. Only approved campaign codes and classified referral sources are used; raw URLs, query strings and private links are excluded from stored optional analytics.

Campaign information is kept for no more than 30 days from the original visit. Optional detailed records are kept for no more than 60 days from the event. Copying or linking does not restart either period. Linked campaign information expires at the earlier applicable limit and stops being eligible when consent expires or is withdrawn.

Where separately enabled, non-identifying monthly totals are kept for no more than 12 months from the end of that month. Campaign groups, including a combined Other group, are released only when they contain at least five distinct paid orders. We do not create these totals without the separate approval for their treatment after withdrawal.

Records needed to deliver your shortlist, reconcile payments, handle refunds, secure the service or demonstrate your privacy choices are separate from optional analytics. Refusing or withdrawing analytics does not prevent you from using or paying for Vowspan and does not automatically erase records we must retain for those separate purposes. Their applicable retention and your rights are described in the Privacy Notice below; optional records do not become service or accounting records merely because they are linked to an enquiry or payment.

Optional Google Analytics is available. When enabled, it runs only after permission and only on approved public pages.This Google integration does not run on private matching pages or receive payment or purchase events. It may process public page visits, session and engagement events, browser and device information, online identifiers, limited referral information and approved campaign labels. Google receives technical connection information, including your IP address, when a request is made.

We do not send names, contact details, wedding preferences or answers, private links, or raw URLs and query strings to Google Analytics. We do not use it for personalised advertising or customer matching. Analytics cookies such as _ga and _ga_* expire within your current consent period, which is no more than 180 days, without renewing that expiry on each visit.

Google Analytics user and event data retention is set to two months, and new activity does not reset it. Google applies deletion through its scheduled process. This setting is separate from browser-cookie expiry and does not limit Google’s standard aggregated reports. The 12-month limit above applies to Vowspan’s separately approved non-identifying monthly totals.

You can accept or reject analytics using the cookie controls and change your choice through Cookie settings. Only necessary turns optional analytics off for everyone using this browser. It does not change choices on other devices. Withdrawal immediately stops optional collection here and clears the analytics cookies we control. We confirm completion only after server withdrawal is saved. If that step fails or you are offline, it remains pending and can be retried when you reconnect. Already in-flight requests cannot be recalled, and withdrawal does not automatically erase information already sent to Google. Contact us for access, deletion or choices on other devices.

Read more in Google’s privacy notice.

Privacy Notice

We collect the information you choose to submit, including your email address, private session details, venue preferences, practical wedding details such as date, area, guest count and venue-only budget range, optional notes, venue-contact consent, and payment status and reference information.

To operate and secure Vowspan, we and our service providers may also process basic technical information such as IP address, browser or device type, timestamps, and security logs.

Your answers and preferences are personal information under POPIA. Please do not submit identity numbers, card or bank-account details, medical information, or other sensitive personal details into Vowspan forms.

We use your information to create and manage your private session, compare both partners' answers, prepare and email your shortlist, notify the Vowspan admin about your request, and troubleshoot the service. Optional marketing and usage analysis is subject to the separate consent and limits described in Cookies and analytics above.

Where you have agreed to venue enquiries, we share only the wedding requirements needed by relevant venues to check pricing and suitability. Names, contact details, free text notes and identifying details are excluded. We record the accepted terms and privacy versions, the submitting partner and the time of acceptance.

Providing your email address and answers is voluntary, but we cannot prepare or send your shortlist without them.

Emails about your invite, shortlist request, expected delivery time, and completed shortlist are service communications. We will not add you to a marketing list or send promotional emails unless you separately choose to receive them.

We do not sell your personal information.

We use third-party providers to host the application, store session data, process payment, and deliver email. Current providers include Neon, Vercel, Yoco, and EmailJS. These providers may process information outside South Africa. Where personal information is transferred outside South Africa, we take reasonable steps to use providers and arrangements that offer appropriate protection.

Incomplete sessions are deleted or de-identified 30 days after the last activity. Completed session information is retained for up to 90 days after we send the shortlist, unless we need to keep it longer to respond to a request, resolve a dispute, meet a legal obligation, or you ask us to delete it sooner.

After the applicable period, we delete or de-identify the information from our active systems. Limited residual copies may temporarily remain in routine backups or service-provider logs and will be overwritten or deleted according to applicable retention schedules. Optional analytics follows the separate 30-day campaign, 60-day detail and 12-month approved monthly-total limits above; these service-record provisions do not extend them.

We use reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect personal information against loss, unauthorised access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction. No online system is completely secure. If a security compromise affects your personal information, we will take steps required by applicable law.

Depending on the circumstances, you may ask us to:

• confirm whether we hold your personal information;
• provide access to it;
• correct inaccurate or outdated information;
• delete information we are no longer authorised to retain;
• object to certain processing; or
• withdraw consent where processing is based on consent.

We may need to verify your identity before completing a request. Complaints may be submitted through the Information Regulator's eServices portal or by emailing POPIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za.

Questions or requests: sean.hoenderdos@gmail.com