Shipping policy

Quick overview: For dispatch timeframes and a concise delivery summary, see Shipping & Delivery.

Last updated: 27 September 2026

1. HOW WE SHIP

We ship with UPS, FedEx, DHL or New Zealand Post. All parcels are sent with tracking.

Not every parcel travels with a signature service: the options depend on the carrier and on the destination. Where your parcel is sent with signature on delivery, it can only be handed over to someone who signs for it.

If nobody is there, the carrier may leave a card, redirect the parcel to a pickup point, or hold it at a depot. Collecting it, or rearranging delivery, is yours to do. Your tracking link tells you where the parcel is, so please follow it. A parcel that is not collected comes back to us, and section 5 applies.

Tracking and proof of dispatch are not proof of receipt.

2. THE ADDRESS WE SHIP TO

We ship to the delivery address on your order, and we may dispatch earlier than the timeframe we quoted. If your address changes at any point after you order, tell us straight away. On a made-to-order gown, months can pass between your purchase and your dispatch date, and we have no way of knowing that you have moved.

To change a delivery address, email stylist@ephemerisbridal.com. A change takes effect only once we have confirmed it to you in writing. Until we confirm it, your order still ships to the address on it.

Tracking is not always issued the moment a parcel leaves us. A tracking number can reach you several days after dispatch, and some carriers show no movement until the parcel reaches a sorting hub. The absence of tracking does not mean your order is still with us, and it is not a window in which an address can still be changed.

Please give us a correct full name, delivery address, email address and phone number. Customs delays, return-to-sender fees and any other charge caused by details that were wrong or out of date are yours. If your order is delivered to the address on it, delivery is complete.

We do not deliver to PO Boxes. Please give us a residential or business address.

3. WHEN WE SHIP

Dispatch timeframes for Ready-to-Wear, Made-to-Order and Bespoke orders are set out in our Terms of Service. Delivery time is additional to the dispatch timeframe.

Your order joins the dispatch queue only once we have everything we asked you for. Where we are waiting on your measurements or on an answer from you, your order waits with us, and we are not responsible for a dispatch delay caused by a late or missing reply.

4. TAX AND IMPORT DUTIES

Any applicable New Zealand GST is shown at checkout.

United States. We cover any import duties on orders delivered to the United States, including orders dispatched from outside the US. Applicable sales tax, if any, is shown at checkout.

Other destinations. If checkout states that import duties and taxes are included, or collects them with your order, we arrange payment of those charges. You should not have to pay the same import charges again on delivery. If a carrier asks you to do so, contact us with the notice so we can resolve it.

If import duties and taxes are not included or collected at checkout, and we have not stated that we cover them, you are responsible for any applicable import charges and carrier clearance fees.

Before you order, shipping charges and the applicable tax and duty information are shown at checkout. Please contact us if anything is unclear before placing your order.

5. PARCELS THAT ARE REFUSED OR NOT COLLECTED

If a parcel is refused, is not collected, or cannot be delivered because the address on the order was wrong or out of date, and it comes back to us, we will contact you and offer either a second dispatch at your cost, or, for a ready-to-wear item, a refund or store credit after the item is returned and inspected, less the costs we have actually incurred and disclosed.

This is not the same as a statutory cancellation, and it is not the same as a parcel lost by the carrier. Those are handled separately.

6. IF A PARCEL DOES NOT ARRIVE

Every parcel we send is tracked, and our carriers provide proof of delivery. Depending on the carrier and the service, that proof is a signature, a photograph of where the parcel was left, a GPS location, or a combination of these.

Please follow your tracking link. If tracking shows your parcel as delivered and you do not have it, tell us as soon as you can, and in any case within 7 days of the delivery scan. Carriers give us a short window to open an investigation, and once that window closes a claim can no longer be made. We will raise the investigation with the carrier and tell you what it finds.

Where the carrier cannot show that your parcel was delivered, we treat it as lost in transit, and we replace it or refund you.

Where the carrier's proof shows that your parcel was delivered to the address on your order, to a pickup point, to a neighbour or to a safe place, the parcel has reached you. A theft or a loss after that point is not ours to carry. The same applies where you asked the carrier to leave the parcel somewhere, to redirect it, or to release it without a signature: that instruction is yours, and so is what follows from it.

Nothing in this section affects a statutory right you have where goods never came into your possession.