Privacy policy

Last updated September 24, 2026

What the wedding app collects, where it goes, and what you can ask us for. Every claim on this page was checked against the code that runs the app, not against what we meant to build.

The short version

• There is no analytics and no advertising tracking in this app. No Google Analytics, no Meta pixel, no Plausible, no PostHog, nothing. We checked by searching the source, not by remembering.
• We never see your card number. Stripe or Apple takes payment.
• We do not sell anything to anybody.
• Your guests are never shown an advertisement.
• Two cookies, both strictly necessary to keep you signed in. No tracking cookies, so there is no cookie banner to click.

If you are a couple

To open an account we store your email address and a hash of your password — a one-way scramble, so we cannot read your password and neither can anyone who takes the database.

To build the app we store what you type into it: your names, your wedding date, your city, your venue and its address, your schedule, your budget, your checklist, your seating plan, and the colors you picked.

When you buy, Stripe — or Apple, in the iPhone app — tells us the payment succeeded and we record that it did. Your card number never reaches us.

If you are a guest

You did not sign up for this, and we know that. A couple invited you and typed your details into their guest list. That is a perfectly ordinary thing for someone to do about a wedding they are inviting you to, but it means your information reached us through them rather than from you, and you are entitled to know exactly what is in there.

The guest list can hold:

• Your first and last name
• Your email address and phone number, if the couple added them
• Your postal address, if they are sending paper invitations
• Whether you are coming, what you chose to eat, and any dietary note — which can be a food allergy, and which we treat with the care that deserves
• Whether you are a child, which table you are on, and which seat

If you then use the app, we also store what you do in it: photographs you upload, anything you write in the guest book, songs you request, game answers, and whether you turned on reminders.

Who can see it. The couple can see everything about their own wedding. Other guests can see your name, and — if the couple has those features on — your photographs, your guest book entry and your table. Other guests cannot see your email address, your phone number, your postal address or your dietary note. Nobody outside that wedding can see any of it.

What you can ask for. Write to hello@specialvows.com and we will tell you everything the app holds about you, correct anything wrong, or delete you from it. We will do that whether or not the couple asks us to, and we will not make you explain why. If deleting you would visibly change the couple’s wedding — an empty seat on their plan — we will tell them what changed, but not make it their decision.

Cookies — both of them

Two, and neither tracks you anywhere. Both are http-only, which means no JavaScript on the page can read them, and both are marked secure in production.

• A couple’s session, set when you sign in, lasting 60 days. It holds a session id and nothing else.
• A guest’s device token, set when you join a wedding, lasting 400 days. It is what lets you close the app and come back to your seat and your photographs without a password. It is deliberately longer than the wedding, because the album outlives the day.

Neither is shared with anybody, and neither is used to build a profile of you. There is nothing here to opt out of, which is why you were not asked.

Who else touches your data

Eight services, each doing one job. We do not send your data anywhere that is not on this list.

• Netlify — hosts the app and stores uploaded photographs.
• Neon — the database everything else lives in.
• Stripe — takes payment. They see your card; we do not.
• Apple and RevenueCat — in the iPhone app, Apple takes payment and RevenueCat tells us which wedding it unlocks. They see your purchase, not your wedding.
• Resend — sends the emails the app sends, such as an invitation link.
• Anthropic — the AI behind Kate and the writing tools (speeches, vows, the ceremony). When you ask Kate something, what you asked and the parts of your wedding she needs to answer it — the date, your city, your budget, your guest counts, your checklist — go to Anthropic so the answer can be written. When you use a writing tool, your answers to its questions go the same way. Anthropic’s commercial terms do not allow them to train their models on it. Nothing goes to them unless you ask Kate or use a writing tool.
• Porkbun — only if you buy your own web address. We register the name in our account, with WHOIS privacy on, so your name and address are not sent to them or published.
• Your browser’s push service — if you turn on reminders, the notification is delivered by whoever makes your browser (Apple, Google, Mozilla). We send them the message and an anonymous address for your device. Turning reminders off stops it.

How long we keep it

For as long as the wedding exists in the app. When you buy, we record a date twelve months ahead as the hosting period we undertake.

At the end of that period the photographs are deleted. A month before, we email the couple; nothing is removed until at least a month after that email actually went out. The job is not allowed to delete a wedding it has no record of having warned, so an unreachable address delays the deletion rather than causing a silent one.

Only the photographs and their thumbnails go. The guest list, the schedule, the seating plan and the guest book — including recorded video and voice messages — are not touched by it. What was sold was photo hosting, and that is the only thing with a term on it.

Ask us to delete a wedding and we delete it — the photographs, the guest list, the writing, all of it. It cascades: removing the wedding removes everything attached to it.

Children

The guest list has a box marking a guest as a child, so that meal counts and seating work. That is the only reason it exists. We do not knowingly collect anything else about a child, and the app is not built for children to sign themselves up to.

Where your data is

On servers in the United States. If you are in the UK or the EU and would like the detail of that transfer, write and ask and we will give you a straight answer rather than a paragraph of boilerplate.

Getting hold of a person

hello@specialvows.com, or by post at the address in the footer. A person reads it, and you will get a reply from a person.