How early should you order before the date?

The arithmetic, line by line

An engraved object does not exist before the order: there is no shelf to take it from. So the workshop comes first — 48 hours between the order and a sealed parcel, the time to engrave, check and pack.

Then transit: 48 to 72 hours within France, two days more across the rest of Europe. End to end that is four to five days in France, six to seven elsewhere — and the United Kingdom sits in the second group, plus whatever customs adds.

The margin to keep

We advise a week for France and ten days for anywhere else. The remainder is slack: a bank holiday, a pickup point closed, an address typed in a hurry.

One period asks for more — May, when communions pile up. Two weeks then. The rest of the year, announcing two weeks everywhere would be a comfort figure, and an inflated lead time loses as many orders as a tight one spoils.

The dates don't fall on the same day everywhere

This is the trap when the parcel crosses a border. Mothering Sunday falls on the fourth Sunday of Lent, which lands anywhere between 1 March and 4 April, while French, German and Spanish mothers are celebrated in May — on the last, the second and the first Sunday respectively. The French date even moves to the first Sunday of June when the last Sunday of May is Whitsun, roughly one year in seven.

Father's Day is the third Sunday of June here and in France, but German fathers are celebrated on Ascension Day, a Thursday, and Spanish ones on 19 March. At Christmas the gap reappears: German presents are opened on the evening of the 24th, Spanish ones on 6 January for the Kings.

The banner counts the days for you

Rather than ask you to redo that arithmetic, the banner at the top of the site does it. When a date from your own market enters the useful window it names it and counts the days left to order in time — and it falls silent the moment the deadline has passed.

That silence is a choice rather than an oversight: announcing a date we can no longer serve is promising a late parcel to somebody counting on it. Between an invented urgency and nothing at all, nothing at all is the honest option — and the banner goes back to the dispatch promise.