The full matrix: every favour size against every load

Favour candles run from tiny 30g tins tucked into a return-gift box up to 200g jars that function as a real gift in their own right. The fragrance load moves too — 6% for a delicate floral in a small vessel that will be lit in a bedroom, 10% for a heavier oud in a larger jar. Both variables multiply, so the range across this table is nearly nine-fold, from 180g of oil at the bottom corner to 2kg at the top.

Read your favour weight down the left, your intended load across the top, and take the oil quantity. The bottle recommendation beside each figure is the smallest single CSI purchase that covers the requirement plus a wastage allowance, which the next section explains and justifies.

The complete order sheet: 100 × 100g favours at 8%

This is the whole order, line by line, for the most common brief. The worked example uses British Rose Fragrance Oil, which is the obvious wedding default and, at ₹3,068 per kilogram, one of the least expensive florals in the CSI range. Substitute any oil you like — the alternatives table further down gives you the totals for four other wedding-appropriate scents.

Two lines in that sheet are deliberately larger than the requirement, and both decisions are worth defending.

The oil. You need 800g and you are buying 1,000g. There is no 800g size, and building 800g out of a 500g bottle plus three 100g bottles costs more per gram, arrives as four separate units, and gives you four opportunities for a lot mismatch. The 1kg is the cheaper, cleaner and safer buy, and the roughly 200g of surplus is genuinely usable: it covers the approval sample, a re-pour of any units that fail QC, a spare set for the couple, and the near-certain "can we add ten more" phone call from the planner in week five. Surplus fragrance oil is not waste — it has a 1kg-priced value of ₹613.60 and it keeps.

The wax. You need 9.2kg. Luxury Soy Wax Chunks come at ₹299 per 500g, ₹599 per 1kg, ₹2,995 per 5kg and ₹5,999 per 10kg. To cover 9.2kg from smaller packs you would need a 5kg pack plus five 1kg packs — that is ₹5,990 for six units, against ₹5,999 for a single 10kg bag. You save ₹9 and take on five extra packets that may not share a production batch, in an order where 100 candles will sit on one table under the same lighting. Take the 10kg bag. It is the right buy over 5kg-plus-1kg every single time on a run this size.

The vessel is the largest single line after wax and the easiest one to move on. It is also the line that decides your favour size, so pick it before you run the fragrance calculation, not after. These are real CSI vessels with the fill weight they are sold against — always confirm capacity on the product page before ordering 100 of anything.

Note what that table does to a quote. Switching a 100g favour from the ₹47 glass jar to the ₹21.24 mini jar takes ₹25.76 off every unit — ₹2,576 across 100 favours, which is more than the entire wick and sticker budget combined. Browse the full range in glass jars for candle making before you fix a price.

The 10% column of the matrix is not available on every wax, and that is a compatibility fact rather than a preference. Luxury Soy Wax Chunks take a fragrance load up to 13%, so the whole matrix is open to them. Luxury Soy Wax CSI 464 flakes are rated up to 10% — the top of the matrix and no further. Overshooting a ceiling does not produce a stronger favour; it produces oil sweating on the surface of 100 candles the client is about to unbox.

Wick sizing is set by vessel diameter, not by scent or by run size. For narrow favour jars Eco Candle Wicks Thin (C1) at ₹590 per 100 are the usual answer; wider 200ml jars will often need Thick (C2) at ₹944 per 100. Compare the full range in candle wicks, and if a favour reads weak after curing, work through the weak throw diagnosis guide before you blame the oil.

Every figure below assumes 100 favours of 100g at an 8% load, so 800g consumed and a 1kg bottle purchased. The "covers" column tells you how many 100g favours each size makes, which is the fastest way to size a smaller run.

The spread between the cheapest and most expensive fragrance across an entire 100-favour run is ₹5,035 — about ₹50 a unit. That is meaningful but it is not the dominant line: wax and vessels together account for ₹10,699 of the rose total regardless of which oil you pick. If you need to bring a quote down, cut the vessel before you cut the fragrance. A cheaper jar is a design decision; a weaker scent is the one thing every single guest will notice.

Wastage: the 5–10% nobody budgets for

Every calculation above describes a perfect world in which 800g of oil becomes exactly 100 candles. It never does. Three losses are structural and predictable, and a hundred-unit run makes all three larger, not smaller.

Order the whole run in one lot — this is the section that matters

Fragrance oils are manufactured in batches. Between one batch and the next, small variations in raw-material sourcing and blending are entirely normal — a fractionally brighter top note, a slightly deeper colour, a marginally different behaviour in the same wax at the same temperature. In ordinary retail this is invisible, because a customer buys one candle in March and another in September and never compares them side by side.

A wedding order inverts that completely. One hundred identical favours are opened in the same room, on the same evening, by people sitting at the same table. If units 1 to 60 came from one bottle and units 61 to 100 from a bottle bought three weeks later, the difference that nobody would ever notice in retail becomes the difference two guests remark on to the bride. That is the specific, avoidable failure this section exists to prevent.

The rule is simple. Calculate the corrected quantity, then buy all of it in a single purchase. For 100 favours of 100g at 8% that is one 1kg bottle and the problem does not arise. For a 200g favour run needing 1.6kg, or a 150g run at 10% needing 1.5kg, you are buying two or three units and you must say so at the point of order — message the bulk desk on WhatsApp and ask for the units to be filled from the same lot. It costs nothing to ask and it is not an unusual request; wedding, corporate and hotel runs all need it.

The same logic applies to the wax, which is why the 10kg bag beats six smaller packs for ₹9 less. Soy wax varies between batches too — in cream tone, in the way the top sets, in how much frosting appears after a fortnight. One bag, one lot, one appearance across 100 lids.

The timeline: work back from the wedding, not forward from today

The fragrance calculation is the easy part. The part that loses orders is discovering in week four that a soy favour needs a fortnight of curing before it is worth smelling, and that you need two of those cures, not one — the first before the client approves, the second before the delivery goes out.

Six weeks of process, and you should quote eight weeks of calendar so a delivery delay or a rejected sample does not eat the buffer. Today is mid-August 2026. The Indian wedding season runs broadly November to February and again April to June, with the November–December peak being the busiest. A wedding in mid-November 2026 therefore needs fragrance ordered now, in late August or early September — and that window is not free, because Diwali falls on Sunday 8 November 2026, roughly twelve weeks out, and the same weeks of studio time carry both.

One practical note on the pour itself: at 100 units you are working in batches, and batch-to-batch consistency inside your own studio matters as much as lot consistency from the supplier. Use a weighing scale for every fill rather than pouring by eye, a pen thermometer so the fragrance goes in at the same temperature every time, and wick centering devices so 100 wicks sit identically. Add the fragrance at the temperature your wax specifies — for Eco Soy CSI 400 that is 80–90°C with two full minutes of stirring — and hold that same number across every batch.

Cost per favour, and what to quote the client

Consumed materials for a 100g British Rose favour come to ₹134.99. On the invoice, including the oil and wax you retain, it is ₹145.93. Quote from the consumed figure and treat the surplus as stock, because that is what it is.

Most favour briefs also want the candle presented, and packaging is a real line rather than a rounding error. Using CSI packaging materials: a corrugated candle box at ₹2,242 per 100 is ₹22.42 a unit, candle packaging paper at ₹826 per 100 is ₹8.26, a candle care sticker at ₹413 per 500 is ₹0.83, and crinkle paper filler at ₹300 per 500g works out near ₹3.00 a box. That is ₹34.51 per favour, taking delivered materials to ₹169.50.

At ₹399 a unit, the unboxed rose favour returns ₹39,900 against ₹14,593 of purchasing — a gross of ₹25,307 before your labour, printed labels, delivery and the cost of the samples. Treating materials as 30–35% of price is not a margin target, it is a survival ratio: it is what leaves enough room for the hours a hundred-unit run genuinely takes, which is far more than a first-time maker estimates.

Frequently asked questions