Fragrance Oils for Wedding Favour Candles

The small formats, priced

CSI lists three containers that suit wedding favours. The velvet heart has a published wax capacity of 50 g. The Golden Aluminium Tin has a published fill of 85 g. The black votive jars do not have a published fill weight, so this page costs them at two illustrative fills, 50 g and 70 g — weigh one filled votive of your own wax before you price an order. Tealight cups are not listed in the catalogue, so they are not costed here. Wax is Luxury Soy Wax CSI 464 at ₹507.40 a kilo, rated up to 10% fragrance; the wick is an Eco Thin C1 at ₹5.90.

The four bases sit within about ₹15 of each other, from ₹61.10 to ₹75.58, but they buy very different favours. The tin holds 85 g for ₹75.58 — the most candle per rupee — yet usually needs a lid label, sleeve or pouch to feel like a wedding gift. The velvet heart holds 35 g less and costs ₹1.34 less, but arrives already dressed. The votive is the plainest and the most flexible: pour it at 50 g for a short-burning favour or fill higher for a longer one. The votive jar is ₹35.40 singly and ₹31.86 each in packs of 5 or 10, and the table uses the pack price.

Cost per favour at three oil tiers

Now add the fragrance. The table prices each format with four florals at their 1 kg per-gram rate, from the value tier to the premium tier. Material cost is oil, wax, wick and container; it excludes labour, packaging, freight and GST.

The spread between the value and premium tiers is small: in a 50 g heart, Raat Ki Rani costs ₹14.82 more per favour than British Rose; in an 85 g tin, ₹25.20 more. Across 150 favours, that is ₹2,223.60 for the hearts. For most weddings, the scent can be chosen on preference, not price. The format decision moves the budget more: a heart and a tin in the same oil differ by about ₹10 to ₹20, but the tin's extra packaging is not on this table and often costs more than the difference.

Each two-point step in load changes a British Rose heart by under ₹4. In a small favour, load is a performance decision, not a cost one. Stay within the wax maker's stated maximum — up to 10% for CSI 464, up to 13% for Luxury Soy Wax Chunks — and remember that a 50 g favour burned on a dressing table is smelled in a small space. More oil than the wick can burn cleanly does not make a stronger favour; for how small candles behave, see which fragrances work best in small candles and how much fragrance oil to use in tealights.

Why pack size barely matters per favour

Because each favour holds so little oil, even the dearest way to buy it adds only a few rupees. The table shows the oil cost in one 50 g heart (4 g) and one 85 g tin (6.8 g) at the 15 g, 100 g and 1 kg rates:

Two patterns show. First, the only real step is from 15 g to 100 g, which matches the catalogue as a whole: the 15 g carries a median 23.1% premium per gram over the same oil's 100 g, while above 100 g most oils are priced almost flat. Second, British Rose is the exception that does reward size: its 1 kg is 10.3% cheaper per gram than its 100 g, and its 500 g (₹3.19 a gram) sits between them. For Gardenia and Neroli the 100 g and 1 kg rates are the same to the paisa per gram, so there is no price reason to buy the kilo for a single wedding.

Favour oils worth testing

Florals are the usual choice for wedding favours in India because they read as celebratory and traditional, and because a favour is smelled cold on the table before it is ever lit. That is reasoning about the occasion, not sales data. The four below are in stock and span the price range; we have not published throw measurements, so each is a candidate to test in the actual favour format. The last column of each table shows how many 50 g hearts (4 g of oil at 8%) one pack scents. Mogra and Rajnigandha are out of stock in every size on the pull date and are not offered.

If the couple wants two scents — one for each family's function, say — split the order by function rather than mixing scents in one box, and cost each at its own pack sizes. The leftover grows with each scent you add; the 500-piece split guide shows how. For a broader list of gift scents by recipient, see best fragrance oils for gift candles.

A priced order for 150 favours

Here is a complete order for 150 velvet heart favours in British Rose at 8% on CSI 464. The favours need 600 g of oil and 6.9 kg of wax; with a 5% allowance for pour loss and test burns — a working assumption — that is 630 g and 7,245 g. The cheapest in-stock pack mixes that cover them are listed below.

That is ₹93.14 per favour as ordered, a little above the ₹86.51 per-piece material cost because it includes the 5% allowance, the spare oil, wax and stickers, and the oil at the 500 g + 100 g + 15 g rates rather than the 1 kg rate. If the same 150 favours went into 85 g tins instead, the order would be ₹15,724.00 (13 × pack of 12 (156 tins), 1,071 g of oil as 1 × 1 kg + 1 × 100 g, and 1 × 10 kg + 2 × 1 kg + 1 × 500 g of CSI 464). In 70 g votives it would be ₹14,359.80. For guest lists of 300, 500 or 1,000, the bulk wedding quantity guide has the gram tables.

Planning for the November–February season

Favour makers usually receive orders in clusters around the busiest wedding weeks, and those weeks follow the calendar each family chooses. We do not publish or predict wedding dates. What you can control is the lead time you quote. Working backwards from a function date, a favour order needs time to test the oil in the favour, pour, cure for around two weeks (our planning assumption), label and deliver. Quote that lead time to every couple at enquiry, and hold stock of the scent-neutral materials — wax, hearts, tins, wicks — so that only the oil depends on the couple's choice.

If you expect several weddings in the season, standardise on two or three favour scents and hold them in 500 g or 1 kg. That is where British Rose's price break pays: across three 150-favour weddings you would use about 1.9 kg of oil, and the kilo rate saves real money. For oils priced flat, like Gardenia and Neroli, holding a kilo buys stock security, not a lower rate. For the Diwali run that comes first, see Diwali gift candle production; for corporate wedding-season gifting, corporate gift candles; and for choosing a single supplier for the whole season, where to buy in bulk for festive and corporate manufacturing.

Two last cautions. Do not promise a scent you have not tested in the favour format; the same oil can read differently in a 50 g heart and a 200 g jar. And do not promise Mogra or Rajnigandha to a couple this season — both are out of stock in every size on our 24 September pull, and we do not publish restock dates. If they ask for jasmine, test Raat Ki Rani or Jasmine instead.

Frequently asked questions