The Light Plan: terms

Last updated: 9 September 2026

What This Is

The light plan is a free document. You give us your wedding date and the place you are marrying, and we work out what the sky does that evening: when the golden hour opens, when the sun sets, how long the blue window lasts, when it goes properly dark, what your moon is doing, and which star stands over you at midnight. We email it to you as a file, so that you can send it on to your photographer.

What It Costs

It is free, and we never ask you for a card. We ask for an email address because we need somewhere to send the file. Ask us to delete it and we will.

The Letters

There is an optional checkbox for marketing letters on each full moon before your wedding. If you tick it and submit the form, you agree to receive those letters. The file comes to you whether or not you subscribe. Every marketing letter carries an unsubscribe link that works on the first click. We send you nothing else unless you asked for it.

Where The Numbers Come From

Positions of the sun, the moon and the planets are calculated for the coordinates of the place you chose, by an open astronomical engine, and we check its answers against the ephemeris that NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory publishes. Times are local to your place, on your date, in its own time zone.

What The Times Do Not Include

Two things, and both of them matter on the day.

The first is weather, and a cloudy evening has no golden hour worth the name. Nobody can see your forecast a year out.

The second is the ground you are standing on. Our times are astronomical, which means the sun reaching the true horizon. If a hill, a ridge or a tall building stands between you and the sun, your light goes earlier than this document says, sometimes by half an hour.

The order never changes: the golden hour comes before sunset, sunset before the blue window, the blue window before dark. The minutes are close. Plan the order, and leave yourself room around the minutes.

We Can Be Wrong

This is made by a clothing company that loves the sky. It is not a professional astronomical service, and we do not promise the document is free of errors. Software has bugs, and a place can be read as the wrong place.

Two things are worth checking yourself, and they are printed at the top of the file: your date, and your place. Everything else is worked out from those two. If either one is wrong, so is the rest.

If your day depends on a particular minute, confirm that minute somewhere else as well. Decisions about your wedding stay with you and with the people you hire.

Using The File

The file is yours. Send it to your photographer, your planner, your family, anyone who needs it. What you cannot do is sell it, publish it as your own work, or take our name off it and pass it around as a template. The text, the images and the design belong to Ephemeris Bridal Limited.

What We Do Not Promise

We do not promise the page works at every moment. It may be down, and it may change.

Your result is not saved to an address you can return to. That is also why nothing about your wedding is published anywhere. If you want to keep it, keep the file we send you.

Your Data

What we collect, why, how long we hold it and how to have it deleted is in our privacy notice.

Changes

We may change these terms. The date at the top tells you when they last changed.

Who We Are

Ephemeris Bridal Limited is a New Zealand company, and Ephemeris is the name we trade under. In these Terms, “we”, “us” and “our” refer to Ephemeris Bridal Limited. 19 Braemar Place, Twizel 7901, New Zealand stylist@ephemerisbridal.com

The Law That Applies

These terms are governed by the law of New Zealand. If you live somewhere whose consumer law gives you rights that cannot be signed away, you keep those rights in full, and nothing written here takes them from you.