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 a completed shortlist request is submitted. 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Venue details may be incomplete, outdated, or unverified.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.

Vowspan will not contact venues on your behalf unless you ask us to.

Private session links should only be shared with your partner or someone you trust. Anyone with the link may be able to access the session.

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.

Privacy Notice

We collect the information you choose to submit, including your email address, private session details, venue preferences, practical wedding details such as area, guest count and budget range, and any optional notes.

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, payment information, medical information, or other sensitive personal details.

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, troubleshoot the service, and analyse aggregated or de-identified usage patterns to improve Vowspan.

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, and deliver email. Current providers include Neon, Vercel, 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. We may keep aggregated or de-identified information to understand and improve Vowspan.

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