A Wedding Client Wants Mini 50 g Candles as Favours — How Do I Calculate the Raw-Material Quantities Differently from Standard 200 g Candles?

The favour order as numbers

The title gives the favour size and the size you normally make. It does not give a quantity, so the page compares two orders that use the same 50 kg of mix: 1,000 favours of 50 g and 250 standard candles of 200 g (both worked examples), at the series 8% load, in CSI 464 with Gardenia. The full purchase for 1,000 favours, labels and stickers included, is the 1,000-favour purchase post; this page is about why the calculation differs.

Two lines in that table surprise people. The melter does not care: 5 melts of 10 kg either way. And the labour is not quite four times, because a smaller candle is quicker to pour and top, but wicking, labelling and packing take nearly as long for a favour as for a full candle. The 1.2 and 1.6 minutes are worked examples; time your own 20 pieces of each before you quote. Labour is usually where favour quotes go wrong; the people-minutes method is in the 300-in-10-days post.

Fill tolerance: why 3 g matters four times as much

Hand-pouring from a pitcher, even carefully, gives a spread of fill weights. In the worked example it is ±3 g; measure yours by weighing 20 consecutive pours. On a 200 g candle that is ±1.5%; on a favour it is ±6.0%. Three consequences follow, and none of them appear in a 200 g plan.

The label. If the favour says “50 g”, the light end of your spread is 47 g. Net-quantity rules for packaged goods exist (the Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules); check current requirements for your case, as this is not legal advice. The practical answer is a target fill of 53 g so that the light end is still 50 g, or a label that says what you can actually pour. How brands set a printed net weight is the net-weight label post.

The material. Pouring every favour 3 g heavy costs 3 kg of extra mix over 1,000 favours (6.0% more), against 0.75 kg over 250 standard candles. Same grams per candle, four times the candles. Plan the extra into the mix, or tighten the pour.

The container. A target of 53 g needs a vessel whose stated capacity sits comfortably above it, plus headspace for the flame and the lid. Measure your own: weigh water to your chosen fill line on a tared scale, then convert with the usual candle-maker rule of thumb (wax weighs roughly 0.86–0.9 of the same volume of water) and confirm with a test pour. Why a 200 ml jar does not hold 200 g of wax is the 200 ml jar post; the same physics shrinks a 40 ml jar to roughly 34.4–36.0 g.

Which CSI containers actually hold 50 g

CSI lists several small containers, and their pages state capacity in different ways: some in grams of wax, some in millilitres, one as a brim figure, one not at all. Only stated figures are used here; none of these listings states an inside diameter, so the wick test is done in the actual vessel.

Where the money goes in a 50 g favour

Before the container, a favour costs ₹46.57, ₹0.93 a gram, close to the 200 g candle’s ₹0.86. The wick is the first difference (0.118 against 0.047 rupees per gram of candle), the container the big one: at ₹31.86, the votive alone is 40.6% of the favour. That is why favour pricing per gram (“a quarter of my 200 g price”) loses money, and why a ₹-per-piece quote that names the container is the honest one. The cost-per-gram method behind this table is the cost-per-gram post.

1,000 × 50 g against 250 × 200 g, line by line

Read the last column. The weight-driven lines are identical; the piece-driven lines are four times; labour is about three times on the worked-example minutes. Buffers follow the same split: a 2% breakage allowance on containers is 20 pieces for the favours and 5 for the standard order, while a 1% heel on the mix is the same 0.5 kg either way. Why piece buffers sit apart from wax buffers is the piece-buffer post; jar breakage allowances at scale are the 5,000-jar post.

The favour test stage, priced

Your 200 g candle’s wick, load and burn results do not transfer to a vessel a quarter of the size. The good news is that favour tests are cheap in oil: a 6/8/10% ladder takes 3, 4 and 5 g a candle. The test stage below proves the load, the wick and the fill in the actual votive, and ends with samples the client holds.

In the worked example a signed favour is about 20 days from the brief. If the date is close, the fastest honest route is a favour vessel and wick you have already proven, in the couple’s scent if it is proven too. What the client should approve physically is the approvals post.

The decision rule and what protects you

The decision rule. A favour plan is ready when four numbers are fixed: the target fill (labelled weight plus your measured tolerance; 53 g here), a container whose stated capacity sits above it with headspace (70 g or more here), a wick proven in that container at the chosen load, and a per-piece price that covers container, wick and minutes as well as wax and oil. If the container cannot hold the target fill, change the container or the labelled weight, never the tolerance on paper. The settling numbers are 20 favours per kilogram, ±6.0% per 3 g, and 48.1% of the materials in the wick and container.

What to buy

Six items, chosen on page statements, price and stock on 7 October 2026. CSI publishes no burn or throw data and no wick sizing for these containers, so nothing is ranked on performance.

Frequently asked questions