Privacy notice

5 Star Wedding Directory is published by 5 Star Weddings Ltd, registered in England and Wales under company number 11600740, registered office Dragon House, Princes Way, Bridgend CF31 3AQ. This notice explains what personal information we collect when you use 5starweddingdirectory.com (the “Site”), why we collect it, who receives it and the choices you have. We are the data controller for the information described here. It is written under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018, and applies to visitors from the UK, the European Economic Area and elsewhere.

What we collect and why

When you enquire with a venue or a wedding creative

The enquiry form asks for your names, your email address, your wedding date or the months you are considering, your guest numbers, what you would like (availability, prices, the brochure, rooms, a visit) and your message. Your enquiry comes to us, and our team passes it on to the venue or business you chose so that they can reply to you. We do not send enquiries to venues automatically, we do not pass them to anyone else, and we do not call you unless you ask for a call. The lawful basis is the steps taken at your request in order to put you in touch with the business, and our legitimate interest in running the directory and following up an enquiry that goes unanswered.

When you use Aura, our AI assistant, and create a profile

See “Aura” below.

When you use live chat

Our “Chat with our team” button connects you with our staff through ProvideSupport, a live chat service. What you type, your name or email if you give them, and technical details such as your IP address and browser are processed by ProvideSupport on our behalf and kept in our chat records so that we can help you and keep a record of the conversation. Please do not put sensitive personal information in a chat. The lawful basis is our legitimate interest in answering visitors who ask for help.

When you contact us

The contact form asks for your name, your email address, the subject and your message. We use it to answer you. The lawful basis is our legitimate interest in responding to people who write to us.

When you write a review

A review carries the name you give, your email address (not published), your rating, your words and the date of your wedding or stay. We publish the review with the name you gave once it is checked. The lawful basis is your consent, which you can withdraw by asking us to remove the review.

When you apply to be listed, or sign up as a business

The listing and business sign-up forms ask for your business name, your name, your email address, telephone number, where you work and your website. We use them to assess and set up a listing and to manage your membership and the agreement between us. The lawful basis is the steps taken at your request before entering a contract, and the contract itself.

When we check a member’s website

Website check. If you are a member, with your agreement we read the public pages of your own website, using the address on your listing, to prepare a visibility report. We read only what any visitor can see, we follow your robots.txt, and we keep limited technical records (page addresses, times, response codes, a fingerprint of each page and the facts we extract, such as titles and descriptions) and our findings. We do not store full page text or images. You can switch the check off in your portal at any time, or email [email protected]. More detail is at https://5starweddingdirectory.com/visibility-check/.

When you subscribe to our newsletter

We use your email address to send the newsletter you asked for. The lawful basis is your consent, which you can withdraw at any time using the unsubscribe link in every message.

When you browse

Your shortlist is kept in your own browser and is not sent to us. Our web server records the address, time and page of each request in standard server logs, which we use to keep the site secure and working, under our legitimate interest. Unless your browser sends a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal, we also record which pages and buttons are used and which lead to enquiries, to understand how the Site performs. If you accept statistics cookies, this is joined up with an anonymous random visit identifier; if you do not, it is recorded without any identifier. That identifier holds no name, email or address.

We use Google Analytics and Google Search Console to understand how the Site is found and used, including your approximate location, device and browser, the pages you view and how you reached us. Analytics runs only if you agree to it in our cookie banner, and you can change your mind at any time. The lawful basis is your consent. Google processes this data on our behalf and in some cases for its own purposes; see Google’s privacy policy. You can opt out with Google’s opt-out add-on.

Counts on listings. To show venues and wedding businesses how their listing is used, our own pages keep daily totals for each listing: how many visits, saves, photograph and film opens, and taps on call, WhatsApp, email and website links. These totals use no cookie, no identifier and no IP address, and they cannot be traced to a person. A visit is not counted if your browser sends a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal, or if you are signed in to an account, or if it is an automated visit.

Aura, our AI assistant, and AI features

Aura helps you find venues and wedding creatives on this Site. It is optional: nothing is stored and no request is made to our servers until you open it and send your first message. Aura cannot book, take payments or confirm availability, and it does not give legal or financial advice.

Free messages, your profile and email confirmation

You can send a small number of free messages without signing up. To carry on, you create a free profile with your names, your email address and a password, and you may add your wedding date, guest numbers and the place you are considering. We send an email to confirm your address before the profile is used. Your password is stored only in a protected, scrambled form. To apply the free-message limit fairly we keep a scrambled version of your network address, which is not your IP address in readable form, with your conversation. Your profile lets you sign in later, on any device, and carry on the conversation. You can change or delete your profile at any time, and deleting it also deletes your conversations. Marketing email is a separate, optional choice that is not ticked for you.

What Aura stores

• The messages you type and the replies you receive, and the venues you shortlist or mark “Not for us”.
• Email addresses and telephone numbers typed into the chat are removed from the stored text. If you want a venue to contact you, use its enquiry form instead; that is covered by the enquiry section above.
• Before you sign in, no cookie is set: your browser keeps a temporary token in session storage so the conversation can continue, and it disappears when you close the tab. Signing in sets the sign-in cookies listed in our Cookie Policy.

How long, and how to delete it

Conversations are kept for 90 days and then deleted automatically. The chat window has a “delete my chat” button that erases your conversation straight away. A profile is kept until you delete it or ask us to. You can also ask us in writing to delete either.

AI providers

To write its replies Aura sends the relevant part of your conversation, together with facts held in our directory, to a third-party AI service acting as our processor. Where the provider is outside the UK or EEA the transfer is covered by an approved safeguard. Aura does not make decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects on you. Its suggestions are for information; please check important details with the venue or creative.

Lawful basis

Your consent, given when you send your first message after seeing the notice, and which you can withdraw by deleting your chat or profile; the steps needed to provide your profile; and our legitimate interest in running, securing and improving the service. Test and staff traffic is separated from visitor traffic and excluded from our statistics.

Who receives your information

• The venue or wedding creative you enquire with, who receives your enquiry from us to reply to it. They are a separate data controller for what you then share with them.
• Our service providers, who process data on our behalf under contract: web hosting, content delivery and security (including Cloudflare), email delivery, live chat (ProvideSupport), analytics (Google) and the AI service behind Aura.
• Professional advisers, and authorities where the law requires it or to protect our rights, or the safety of others.

We do not sell your personal information.

How long we keep it

Enquiries and contact messages are kept for 24 months so that we can follow up if a reply goes astray, then deleted. Aura conversations are kept for 90 days. Reviews are kept while they are published. Listing applications are kept for 12 months if no listing follows. Business records and invoices are kept for as long as the law requires. Server logs are kept for 90 days. To stop spam and abuse, our forms keep a scrambled (hashed) form of your network address, never the address itself, in counters that expire within one day. If a submission is held as suspected spam, a record of the attempt is kept for 90 days and the words that were sent are kept for 30 days, so that it can be reviewed and restored if it was genuine, then removed. Newsletter details are kept until you unsubscribe.

Where it is held

Where a provider processes data outside the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, including in the United States, it does so under the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or addendum, standard contractual clauses, an adequacy decision or an equivalent safeguard.

Your rights

Under the UK GDPR, and under the GDPR if you are in the European Economic Area, you may ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it or delete it, object to our use of it, ask us to restrict it, and ask for it in a portable form. You may withdraw consent at any time where consent is the basis. Where you have a profile you can view, change or delete it yourself. We may ask you to confirm your identity before we act on a request. Write to us at the address below. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk, or to the data protection authority where you live.

Marketing

We send marketing email only where you have opted in, or where the law otherwise allows it, and every message carries an unsubscribe link. Opting out does not stop replies to your enquiries or notices about your profile or account.

Age

This site is for people aged 18 and over. It is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect their information. If you believe a child has given us information, contact us and we will remove it.

Security

We use reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect personal information from loss, misuse and unauthorised access, including encrypted connections and password-protected, access-controlled systems. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure. If you believe we have not followed this notice, please email us with “Privacy” in the subject line and we will look into it promptly.

Links to other sites

Venue and creative websites, and other sites we link to, have their own privacy policies. We are not responsible for them.

Cookies

Cookies are small files stored on your device. Our Cookie Policy lists each one and explains how to manage them. Our cookie banner lets you accept or decline optional cookies such as analytics. We honour a “Do Not Track” or Global Privacy Control signal from your browser for our own analytics counting: the daily listing totals described above, and the anonymous record of which enquiry buttons and contact links are used (including taps on call, WhatsApp, email and website links), are not recorded when either signal is sent. This never stops you sending an enquiry, which is your own action. We do not change how other parts of the Site work in response to those signals: Aura, live chat (ProvideSupport) and Cloudflare, which delivers and protects the Site, do not respond to them. Google Analytics and similar statistics tools load only if you accept statistics cookies in our cookie banner, and that choice is what controls them.

Changes to this notice

When this notice changes, the date at the top changes with it.

How to reach us

5 Star Weddings Ltd, Dragon House, Princes Way, Bridgend CF31 3AQ, United Kingdom. Email [email protected] (please put “Privacy” in the subject line) or use the contact page.