Privacy & Cookies

Wed-Start Ltd is genuinely committed to protecting your privacy, ensuring that you get all the information you need to plan your perfect wedding without compromising your personal data.

By using the Wed-Start website and online services, you consent to the data practices described in the statement below:

Collection and use of your personal information

In order to provide you with our services, we collect and process data as follows:

Personally identifiable data such as your name(s), home or work address(es), email address(es), and telephone number(s): This is provided by you directly and allows us to speak with you regarding your wedding plans via virtual consultation and provide you with your tailored wedding guidance.

Demographic information which is not unique to you such as your residency status in the UK, religion, age or gender: It is not essential for us to have this information to send you your tailored wedding guidance, but there may be occasions where it is helpful for us to know or clarify so that we can give you the best and most relevant advice. Examples of this might include:

  • The paperwork required for a legal marriage to take place between a UK national and non-UK national.

  • Whether a religious or cultural ceremony is legally binding in the UK.

  • Advice relating to same-sex marriages.

 This information will not be requested unless necessary, and the reason for its request will be made clear to you. You are under no obligation to answer these questions should you prefer not to, in which case specific wedding advice pertaining to this more sensitive data will simply be omitted from your guidance.

Payment information: We have partnered with Stripe to take payments for our services because we believe they offer better security for you the consumer. You can find more details here, but rest assured that no financial data (for example credit card details) is available to us – it is all stored and processed by Stripe.

Technical data: As you visit www.wed-start.co.uk, certain technical information is collected such as a truncated and anonymised version of your IP address, your operating system and platform, and your chosen browser. We also collect data on your interactions with the website such as how you navigated to it, which pages you visited and for how long, what you clicked on, and how long the website took to respond to your interactions.

We use this information to ensure that our site is both secure, and working optimally, as well as for general marketing purposes (for example tracking how many visitors we get month-to-month). This information is obtained via Google Analytics and is entirely anonymised – we are unable to link the technical information to the name (or other personally identifying details) of any individual.

Cookies

The technical data described above is obtained via the use of cookies (small files that is sent to your browser and stored on your computer/tablet/mobile device. These include cookies set by Wed-Start and by specific third parties (such as Squarespace, Stripe, Zoom, Google, and the social media platforms we link to).

There are four types of cookie:

  • Necessary: essential cookies which enable certain services (such as being able to pay for your Wed-Start).

  • Performance: cookies which provide the anonymised data mentioned above regarding how you came to our website and how long you visited for.

  • Functional: cookies designed to remember your settings or preferences (such as being based in the UK) and optimise the website for you based on that information.

  • Advertising: cookies which collect information about your visit to the site and may be used by third parties (such as Google or Facebook) to advertise products or services based on your interests.

You can opt-out of having Wed-Start store non-essential cookies on your device by selecting “reject” on the cookie banner. This banner is displayed to you upon first visiting Wed-Start and will be shown every 30-days following acceptance or rejection of non-essential cookies.

You can find out more about cookies here.

Sharing, storage, deletion and other uses of your data

Data sharing: Unless required by law, we do not share, rent or sell your data to anyone.

Third party links: Our website does include links to third parties such as social media platforms and additional wedding related resources. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that they have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

Data storage and deletion: During your consultation, your wedding expert will take written or typed notes in order to be able to provide you with your tailored guidance. Once the relevant information is transferred to our digital systems, these notes will be destroyed (by secure shredding in the case of hand-written notes, or by double deletion (from ‘desktop’ and ‘recycle bin’) in the case of typed notes. The digital files are stored on secure servers provided by Google (see their security information here) for no longer than 12 months so that we can return to your wedding plans should you request any additional services. It is then deleted entirely.

We are legally required to store financial information for accounting purposes for a period of seven years. This will include at least one piece of personally identifiable information (such as your e-mail address), the service you purchased, the price you paid and your method of payment (e.g. debit or credit card). As stated above, we do not have access to any specific financial information (such as credit card details) beyond this. After this seven years, all data will be deleted entirely, with any paper copies securely shredded.

Other uses of your data: Since Wed-Start isn’t reliant on repeat business, we have no reason to store or use your data in any other ways (for example using third party newsletter software). During your virtual consultation you may be asked whether we can get back in touch with you after your wedding to seek feedback on the accuracy and helpfulness of our services, or for a testimonial for marketing purposes. You are under no obligation to agree to this and we will not do so without your explicit permission.

Your data protection rights

We operate in full compliance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). GDPR requires us to have lawful basis by which to obtain, process and store your data under certain categories. The lawful bases by which Wed-Start operates are that of consent and legal obligation.

Consent: As stated above, by using the Wed-Start website and online services, you consent to the data practices described in this statement and provide the information required of your own volition. You have the right to remove your consent at any time, in which case all data already provided which is not required to be stored by law will be deleted entirely.

Legal obligation: As stated above, we are required to store certain financial information for a period of seven years. We limit this information to only what is legally required and store it securely on our services for that time period only, after which it is deleted entirely.

Your data protection rights: Under Data Protection Law, you have rights including:

  • Your right of access : You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.

  • Your right to rectification: You have the right to ask us to rectify personal information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.

  • Your right to erasure: You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.

  • Your right to restriction of processing: You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.

  • Your right to object to processing: You have the right to object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.

  • Your right to data portability: You have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances.

You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you. 

Please contact us at hello@wed-start.co.uk if you wish to make a request.

You can find out more about your rights here. Should you have a complaint about how we have used your information, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), with whom Wed-Start is registered under the ICO registration number: ZB342598

Changes to this policy

We may need to make changes to this policy from time to time in line with legal requirements and best practice. Any changes will be made available via www.wed-start.co.uk and, where necessary, notified to you by e-mail.

Any questions?

We truly care about your privacy so questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy policy are welcomed. Please address them to hello@wed-start.co.uk