The rules of the platform

About us

Elite Wedding Society is operated by Karen Pretorius, trading as Elite Wedding Society. Legal status: sole proprietor. Physical address for legal notices: 13 Vaal Drive, Le Voila Complex, Sylviavale, Vanderbijlpark. Email: info@eliteweddingsociety.co.za. Telephone: 076 489 9648.

What the platform does

Couples can make a free wedding website, collect RSVPs from their guests and find wedding vendors. Vendors can list their business and receive enquiries from couples. When a couple and a vendor agree to work together, that agreement is between them. Elite Wedding Society is not a party to it, does not take payment for it and is not responsible for how it is carried out.

We check vendor applications by hand before they appear, but we can't guarantee the quality, availability or prices of any vendor. Please meet vendors, read their contracts and pay deposits only once you're comfortable.

Cost

The platform is free for couples and their guests. Listing a business is currently free for vendors. We plan to offer paid features to vendors later, such as unlocking enquiries with prepaid credits. Those will have their own clearly stated prices and terms, and nobody will be charged without agreeing to them first.

Your account and what you put on the site

Keep your sign-in email secure and let us know if you think someone else has used your account. You're responsible for what you publish. Anything you upload (text, photos, logos) stays yours. You give us permission to store it, show it on the platform and use it as needed to run the service, for as long as it's on the platform.

Only upload photos you have the right to use. Wedding and engagement photos often belong to the photographer who took them, so check your photographer's contract and credit them where they ask you to. If someone tells us that content on the site infringes their rights, we may remove it while we look into it.

Fair use

Please don't use the platform to mislead people, harass anyone, send spam, post anything unlawful or offensive, pretend to be someone else, or try to break, overload or copy the site. We may remove content or close accounts that break these rules.

Extra rules for vendors

Keep your listing accurate and up to date, including your prices and the areas you serve. When a couple sends you an enquiry, use their details only to reply to that enquiry. Don't add them to mailing lists or share them with anyone else without their permission, as POPIA requires. Reply honestly, even if the answer is no. Photos on your listing must show your own work, and if people can be recognised in them, make sure they're happy for you to use those photos to market your business, including where we feature them as described below. If you publish an offer for couples, honour it exactly as you describe it, for every couple who asks for it while it's showing. We may pause or remove a listing or an offer that receives repeated complaints, contains false information or breaks these terms.

To send couples your way, we may feature your business and the photos on your page beyond your page itself: in our journal and guides (including the Couples' Favourites guides and winners' article), in our emails to couples, and on our own social media and Google Business Profile. We use your business name, category, area, a line or two from your About text and photos from your page, always credited to you and linked to your page. You keep the copyright; this is permission for us to show them, not ownership, and we never sell your photos or license them to anyone else. If you'd rather we didn't, switch it off on your listing page: from then on we use your photos only on your own page, and we take down what we can (a post that has already been shared may stay on other people's feeds).

Wedding websites

Wedding websites are private in the sense that we ask search engines not to list them, but anyone with the link can open them. Share the link with care and don't publish information you wouldn't want a stranger to see.

If you add a wedding fund, guests pay you directly through your own payment link (for example PayFast, SnapScan or Zapper). We never receive, hold or pass on that money and aren't part of any arrangement between you and your guests; questions about a payment go to you and your payment provider. The amount raised on your website is the amount you enter.

Reviews

Only couples who contacted a vendor through Elite Wedding Society can review them, once per enquiry. Reviews must be honest and about your own experience. We don't edit reviews, but we may hide one that is abusive, untrue or not about the vendor's work, and vendors can ask us to look at one they believe is unfair.

Real weddings

When you share a real wedding, the photographer keeps the copyright in the photos. The person submitting confirms they may share them, and that any recognisable children are shown with a parent's or guardian's agreement. Together with the photographer's approval, this gives us permission to publish the photos and the story on Elite Wedding Society and to share them on our social media, always with the photographer credited. We don't sell the photos or license them to anyone else. The couple approves the story before it is published, and we may edit it lightly for length and clarity. The couple or the photographer can ask us to take a feature down at any time, and we will. Credited vendors can correct or remove their credit from the link we email them.

Important: limits on our responsibility

We work hard to keep the platform running and accurate, but we provide it as it is and can't promise it will always be available or free of errors. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for loss caused by vendors, couples or guests, by interruptions to the site, or by information that someone else published. Nothing in these terms limits our responsibility for loss caused by our gross negligence or deliberate wrongdoing, or takes away any right you have under the Consumer Protection Act or other law.

Ending your use

You can stop using the platform and ask us to delete your account or listing at any time by emailing info@eliteweddingsociety.co.za. We may close accounts that break these terms. What happens to your information afterwards is explained in our Privacy page.

Changes and the law that applies

We may update these terms as the platform grows. If a change affects you materially, we'll tell you by email or on the site before it applies. These terms are governed by South African law. If something goes wrong, please contact us first so we can try to resolve it together.