Celebrates.ie (“Celebrates”, “we”, “us”) helps people in Ireland find local party and event businesses and plan a celebration. Celebrates.ie is run by KCK Solutions, Cork, Ireland, which is the controller of the personal data described here. This policy explains what we collect, why, who sees it and what your choices are. It applies to the website and everything you do on it.
1. What we collect
- Your account: name, email address, a password (stored only as a one-way hash), and optionally a phone number and county. People who send an enquiry without registering get an account without a password, so they can follow the replies.
- Your enquiries and messages: the details you send to a business (what you need, date, place, number of guests, budget) and the messages and quotes in the conversation.
- Party requests: the occasion, date, county, budget and description you post for businesses to answer. Summaries appear on the public request board without your name, email or phone number.
- Your celebration plans: the checklist, budget and saved businesses in your planner. These are private to you.
- Reviews: the rating and text you write about a business, the month of the event and your first name.
- Business listings: the business name, description, packages and prices, photos, location, website, social links and the contact details you choose to give. Business contact details are public on a listing only in the ways described in section 3.
- Referrals: when a business recommends another business to you, your answer to that offer.
- Messages to us: what you write in the contact form.
- Technical information: IP address, browser type and pages visited, used to keep the site secure and to count visits to a business page. Visits are counted without identifying the visitor and without advertising cookies.
- Marketing choices: whether you agreed to occasional ideas and offers, when and where you agreed.
2. Why we use it, and our legal basis
- To run your account, pass your enquiries and requests to businesses and send you the replies. Basis: contract (providing the service you asked for).
- To send service emails such as sign-in links, verification, new replies, quotes and reminders. Basis: contract and legitimate interests.
- To keep the site safe, stop spam and abuse, and moderate listings, requests and reviews. Basis: legitimate interests.
- To show businesses how many people viewed their page or tapped to contact them. Basis: legitimate interests.
- To send occasional ideas and offers. Basis: your consent, which you can withdraw at any time.
- To meet legal obligations and to establish, exercise or defend legal claims. Basis: legal obligation and legitimate interests.
3. Who sees your information
Businesses never see your email address or phone number. When you send an enquiry, the business sees your first name and what you wrote. Replies and quotes go through Celebrates, and the emails we send only tell each side there is something new to read. If you choose to share your own contact details in a message, that is your decision.
Phone numbers and WhatsApp numbers of businesses are not printed in the page. They appear when a visitor taps to reveal them, and each tap is counted for the business.
Referrals. A business may recommend you to another business, but your details are only passed on after you agree. The other business then sees your first name, what you need, the date and the place, and nothing else.
Reviews show your first name and are checked by our team before they appear. Party requests are checked by our team, and up to ten matching businesses are told about them.
Our service providers process data on our behalf: web hosting (Hostinger), email delivery (an email service we connect through WordPress), spam protection (Cloudflare Turnstile, once switched on), and, if we introduce paid features, payments (Stripe). We do not sell personal data and we do not share it for third-party marketing.
4. Transfers outside the EU
Some providers may process data outside the European Economic Area. Where they do, we rely on safeguards approved under data protection law, such as the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses. Business listings are public and can be seen anywhere in the world.
5. How long we keep it
- Your account and plans: until you delete your account.
- Enquiry and request conversations: for as long as needed to run the service and settle any dispute, normally no longer than 24 months after the last message, after which they are anonymised.
- Marketing consent records: for as long as the consent is in force and afterwards as proof of when it was given or withdrawn.
- Security and technical logs: a short period, normally weeks.
- If you delete your account, we remove your personal details and your plans. Conversations that a business needs for its own records are kept without your name, as “Former customer”.
6. Your rights
Under the GDPR you can ask us to give you a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to how we use it, move it to another service, and withdraw consent at any time. Signed-in customers can download their data and delete their account under Settings, and switch email choices on or off there. For anything else, use our contact page. We may ask you to prove who you are, and we answer within one month. There is no charge.
If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the Data Protection Commission (dataprotection.ie).
7. Security
We use encrypted connections, hashed passwords, limits on repeated sign-in attempts, spam checks and access controls, and we keep backups. No system is completely secure, so please choose a strong password and keep it private.
8. Cookies
We use only the cookies the site needs to work. See our cookie policy.
9. Children
Celebrates.ie is for people aged 18 and over. Parents and guardians may plan a child’s celebration, but children should not create an account.
10. Links to other sites
Business listings link to their own websites and social pages. We are not responsible for their privacy practices.
11. Changes to this policy
We will post any change on this page and change the date at the top. If a change matters to how we use your data, we will tell you by email or on the site.
12. Contact
KCK Solutions, Cork, Ireland. Use our contact page for any privacy question or request.