Privacy Policy
What we collect, what we do with it, and - just as important - what we will never do with it
Last updated 5 September 2026
What we collect
From you: your name, your partner’s name, and your email address when you sign up. The wedding details, photos, and registry items you add. The PayPal.Me link you give us, so guests can send cash gifts straight to you - we store the link itself and nothing else about your PayPal account, and we never see your PayPal login, your balance, or your bank details. A shipping address, so gifts reach you. Extra email addresses you ask us to send notifications to
From your guests: when guests RSVP or give a gift, we record what they entered - their name, their email if they gave one, their mobile number if they gave one, their note, the gift, and the address if they chose to give one so you could post them a thank-you note. All of it is optional except the name, and all of it exists to be passed to you. Guests do not get an account
When a guest can be texted: a guest opts in themselves, on the couple’s wedding website RSVP form. The mobile number field there is optional and exists solely for text updates about that couple’s wedding, sent by AHNOU on their behalf - the form says so right beneath the field, along with message frequency, that message and data rates may apply, and that HELP gets help and STOP opts out. Giving a number there is the opt-in, and we record its wording and the moment it was given. A guest who replies STOP is out for good, across every wedding on AHNOU
Automatically: the ordinary things a web server records to stay up and stay safe - IP address, browser and device type, and the pages requested. We use these to keep the service running and to spot abuse, not to build a profile of you
How we use it
To run your website, registry, and guest list - nothing beyond that. To send you sign-in links, gift alerts, and account notices. To answer you when you write in. To keep the service secure and working. Your data is shown to you, and to your guests only where you chose to publish it on your site
What we never do
We never sell your data or your guests’ data, and we never share it for anyone else’s advertising. We do not run ads inside your registry, we do not share guest information with retailers or marketers, and we do not use your data to train AI models. Your guest list is yours, full stop
The companies that help us run AHNOU
We keep this list short on purpose, and each one only ever gets the piece it needs to do its job:
- Resend sends our email, so it handles the address we are writing to and the message itself
- PayPal handles money gifts. Your guest is sent to your own PayPal.Me link to pay you, so their payment details go to PayPal and never to us, and the money never comes to us at all. PayPal is not helping us there: it is your payment provider and theirs, under its own agreements with each of you
- Stripe handles what you pay AHNOU - guest texting, and a custom domain if you buy one. Card details go to Stripe, never to us
- Skimlinks monetises links to shops we have no affiliate agreement with. On a couple’s registry page it sees which shop link a guest follows, so that a commission can be attributed if they buy. It is given no name, email or address, and it is not on our marketing pages, the builder, or any page a couple manages. Shops we do have our own agreement with are excluded from it
- Twilio carries the text messages, so it handles the number being written to and the message itself. It is given nothing else about a guest
- Google Analytics counts visits on our marketing pages only. It is not present on any couple’s wedding site or registry
- Our domain registrar receives the details a domain registration legally requires, if you buy one
- Our hosting provider stores the data that makes up your site and registry
We may also share information if the law requires it, or to protect someone’s safety. If AHNOU is ever sold or merged, your data would move with it and we would email you first
Email to you, texts only to guests who asked
Every notification AHNOU sends you arrives by email - sign-in links, gift alerts, and account notices. We will never call or text you. Product updates are optional and you can turn them off any time. Sign-in and account emails are not optional while your account is open, because they are how the account works
Texts go to guests, never to couples. Only to a guest who opted in with their own number, only about the wedding they were invited to, and only ever from one AHNOU number that names the couple in every message. Every message says how to stop, and a guest who replies STOP is removed at once and for good - across every wedding on AHNOU, not just the one that texted them
No mobile number and no opt-in record is shared or sold to anyone for marketing or promotional purposes, by us or by anyone we work with
Payments
Cash gifts never come to us. When a guest chooses to send money, they give through your own PayPal.Me link. The money goes directly from your guest to you. AHNOU does not hold it, route it, or take a cut of it, and we never see your PayPal login, your balance, or your bank details
What we keep is the record: who gave, how much, what it was toward, and anything they wrote - so you can thank them. That record is created when your guest presses Gift, which means it reflects what your guest told us they were sending. Your own PayPal activity is the record of what actually arrived, and the two can differ
Stripe handles what you buy from us - guest texting, and a custom domain if you want one. Those are AHNOU billing its own customer. Card details go straight to Stripe and never reach us
How AHNOU makes money
When a guest buys a gift through a link on AHNOU, the retailer may pay us a small commission. It costs the guest nothing - the price is the same as buying direct - and it costs the couple nothing. It comes out of the retailer’s margin
We take no cut of any cash gift, ever. Money given through a couple’s PayPal link goes from guest to couple and never passes through us
Commission does not decide what we show you
How long we keep it
Your account data stays while your account is open. Sign-in links expire within the hour and sessions expire on their own. When you ask us to close your account we delete your site, registry, guest list, and gift ledger within 30 days, keeping only what we must for tax or legal records - a domain purchase, for instance, leaves a receipt we are required to hold. Backups roll off within 90 days
How we protect it
Everything travels over an encrypted connection. We never store your password. What is kept is a one-way scrambling of it, with a different random ingredient for every account - so two people who chose the same word do not look alike, and nobody holding a copy of our database can read either one back. Sign-in codes are kept the same way. Signing in needs the password and a code sent to your email, both every time, so neither one alone opens your account. Access to production data is limited to the people who need it to run the service. No system is perfectly secure, and if a breach ever affected your data we would tell you promptly and plainly
Your data, your choices
You can export your data - website content, registry, guest list, and gift ledger - at any time. You can see and correct anything in your account from your dashboard. You can ask for a copy, ask us to correct something, or ask us to delete it, and you can object to how we use it. If you want your account closed and your data deleted, contact us and a real person will take care of it and confirm when it is done. We answer within 30 days and we will not charge you or treat you differently for asking
If you live in California or another US state with privacy rights
You have the right to know what we collect, to get a copy, to correct it, to delete it, and to opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information. AHNOU does not sell or share personal information, so there is nothing to opt out of - and no financial incentive programs to disclose. To use any of these rights, email us and say what you want; we may need to confirm you are you before we act. An authorised agent can ask on your behalf
If you live outside the United States
AHNOU is operated from the United States, and your data is stored and processed there. Privacy law where you live may differ. If you are in the UK or the EEA, we handle your data to provide the service you asked for and because we have a legitimate interest in running it safely, and you keep your rights of access, correction, erasure, restriction, portability, and objection, along with the right to complain to your local data protection authority
Children
AHNOU is for adults planning an event. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13. Children do appear on guest lists - as names and seat counts entered by the couple - and we treat those entries as the couple’s data and never use them for anything else. If you believe a child’s information reached us in any other way, write to us and we will delete it
Your guests, and your part in this
For your own account, AHNOU decides how data is handled. For your guest list, you do - we hold and process it on your instructions. That means it is on you to have your guests’ agreement to store their details and to publish anything of theirs on your site. If a guest asks you for a copy of their data or asks you to delete it, we will help you do it
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes in a way that matters, we will email you before the change takes effect, and the date at the top of this page will change. Smaller wording fixes will just appear here
Contact
Privacy questions and data requests go to contact@ahnou.com, and a real person answers