Privacy policy

Who is responsible for it

Hide + Seek Elopement Co Ltd, trading as Just Add Vows, is the agency responsible for the personal information described here, under the Privacy Act 2020. Anything on this page can be asked about by writing to us.

What we collect, and why

When you book a day, we ask for your name, your partner's name, an email address, a phone number, roughly how many people are coming and which hour you want. That is what is needed to hold the day, to run it, and to reach you if something changes.

When you send us a question, we ask for a name, an email address and the question itself. The phone number is optional and only there because some things are quicker to answer by ringing back.

When you join our list, we collect your email address and nothing else.

After you book, our welcome pack asks for the practical things: dietary requirements, access needs, and where you are up to with your marriage licence. We deliberately do not ask for any of that before you have decided to book.

For the helicopter day only, we ask what each of you weighs. The pilot calculates the load and balance of the aircraft before every flight and cannot take off without it. It goes to the operator and is used for nothing else.

Payment details

Card payments are handled entirely by Stripe. Your card number never reaches this website or our systems, and we could not see it if we wanted to. Stripe tells us that a payment succeeded, for how much, and which booking it belongs to. Stripe's own privacy policy covers what they do with it.

Who else sees it

The vendors on your day, so the celebrant knows your names and the photographer knows when you are on. Only what they need, and nothing more.

The companies that run this site for us: Stripe for payments, Resend for email, Vercel for hosting, and Neon for the database our bookings live in. Each of them holds this information to provide that service and for no other purpose.

Nobody else. We do not sell personal information, we do not share it with advertisers, and we do not add you to anything you did not ask to be added to.

Where it is stored

Our booking records are stored on servers in the United States, and our email and payment providers are also based overseas. That means your information is held outside New Zealand, where it is protected by the laws of those countries rather than by the Privacy Act 2020 directly. We only use providers with comparable safeguards in place, which is what the Act requires of us.

How long we keep it

Booking records are kept for seven years after your day, because tax law requires us to keep records of what we were paid.

Enquiries that do not become bookings are deleted once the conversation has clearly finished.

Your address stays on our list until you unsubscribe, and every email we send carries a link to do that.

Cookies and what the site measures

This site sets no advertising cookies and does not track you across other websites.

We use Vercel Analytics to count page views and understand which pages people read. It does not use cookies and does not identify individual visitors.

Stripe sets its own cookies inside the payment panel, which it needs for fraud prevention.

Seeing it and correcting it

You can ask us what we hold about you, ask for a copy, ask us to correct it, and ask us to delete it where we are not required to keep it. Write to us and we will answer within twenty working days, which is what the Privacy Act allows, though in practice it is usually the same week.

If you are not happy with how we have handled your information, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner at privacy.org.nz.

Getting hold of us

Write to hello@marriedbyfriends.co.nz or ring +64 21 388 921. A real person answers both.