When you share your most intimate moments through a photo sharing app, you deserve to know exactly where those photos go, who can see them, and what happens to them afterwards. Most wedding photo platforms process your images through third-party cloud services in data centres spread across the globe. Some use your photos to train AI models. Others bury the details in terms and conditions that nobody reads.
Gather & Group does things differently. Your photos stay on UK servers. Our facial recognition runs locally - not through external AI services. Your album is password-protected, and you decide who sees what. When you're done, you download everything and we delete it. Simple as that.
Privacy isn't a marketing checkbox - it's a design decision that shapes everything about how we built this platform.
Every photo uploaded to Gather & Group is stored on servers in the United Kingdom. We don't route data through US data centres or process images in regions with weaker data protection laws. For UK couples, this means your photos are covered by UK GDPR - one of the strongest data protection frameworks in the world.
This is the big one. Our facial recognition technology processes your photos on our own UK infrastructure. We don't send your guests' faces to Google, Amazon, Microsoft, or any other third-party AI service for analysis. The processing happens in-house, on our servers, and the facial data is never shared, sold, or used for any purpose beyond helping you find your photos.
Most competitors that offer facial recognition either rely on third-party APIs (meaning your photos are sent to external services for processing) or they simply don't offer it at all. We believe you shouldn't have to choose between smart photo organisation and genuine privacy.
Your gallery is private to you and your partner. Guests can upload photos via the QR code, but they can't browse your album, see other guests' uploads, or access anything beyond their own upload page. Your wedding photos are for you, not for everyone who happened to attend.
We don't show ads in your album. We don't track your guests' behaviour. We don't sell data to third parties. We don't use your photos to train AI models. Our business model is straightforward - you pay £49 for the service, and that's how we make money.
Every photo in your album belongs to you and the guests who took them. We claim no rights over your content, and we never will. When your access period ends, we delete your data from our servers.
It's easy to think "it's just wedding photos, what's the risk?" But consider what those photos actually contain.
Your wedding album is one of the most comprehensive biometric datasets of your family and friends that exists. It contains clear, well-lit photos of faces from multiple angles, often with names attached (table plans, place cards visible in shots). It includes photos of children. It captures people in unguarded moments - laughing, crying, dancing - the kind of authentic human expression that AI training datasets prize.
When you upload these photos to a platform that processes them through external AI services, you're sharing biometric data about dozens or hundreds of people who never consented to that processing. That's not a hypothetical concern - it's a real data protection issue.
With Gather & Group, facial recognition happens on our infrastructure, using our own models. Guest faces are processed, matched, and grouped - and the facial data stays within our systems. Your guests' faces are never sent anywhere else. They go in, get matched, and stay with us.
Free, but Google processes all images through their AI services. Photos are used to improve Google's products. Data is stored across global data centres. No UK data residency guarantee.
End-to-end encrypted in transit, but Meta's terms allow broad use of metadata. Photos are compressed and lose quality. No organisation, no facial recognition, no album structure.
Most store photos on AWS or Google Cloud, often in US regions. Very few disclose where facial recognition processing occurs. Some use third-party APIs like Amazon Rekognition or Google Vision for face detection - meaning your photos are sent to those services for analysis.
UK servers. Local facial recognition. No third-party AI processing. Password-protected albums. Full GDPR compliance. You own your data.
As a UK-based company storing and processing data in the UK, Gather & Group operates under the UK General Data Protection Regulation.
We process photos based on your explicit consent when you create an album. Guests consent by choosing to upload their photos.
We only collect what's needed to run the service - photos, optional guest names, and the minimal technical data required for uploads to work.
You can request deletion of your album and all associated data at any time. We honour these requests promptly.
We're upfront about how our facial recognition works, what data it generates, and how that data is handled. We don't hide it in page 47 of our terms.
Your data doesn't leave UK jurisdiction. We don't use sub-processors in other countries for image processing.
Our servers are located in UK data centres. We don't use overseas infrastructure for any part of our service, including facial recognition processing.
We use open-source facial recognition models that run entirely on our own infrastructure. We don't send your photos to Google, Amazon, Microsoft, or any other third-party service for facial analysis.
Your album is accessible for 12 months after your wedding. During that time, you can download everything in full resolution. After your access period, we delete your photos and all associated data from our servers.
No. Your photos are used solely to provide you with the Gather & Group service. We don't use them for marketing, AI training, analytics, or any other purpose. Ever.
No. Your album is not indexed by search engines and cannot be found through Google or any other search engine. It's only accessible via your unique link or QR code, protected by your password.
Google Photos is a general-purpose photo service that processes images through Google's AI infrastructure globally. Gather & Group is purpose-built for weddings, processes facial recognition locally in the UK, and doesn't use your photos for any purpose beyond your album. You also get a QR code for easy guest uploads, automatic face grouping, and a dedicated wedding gallery - none of which Google Photos offers out of the box.
UK servers. Local facial recognition. No third-party AI. £49, everything included.
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