A Wedding Client Wants 300 Candles in 10 Days — How Do I Calculate Whether My Current Moulds, Wax Capacity and Team Can Finish on Time?

The wedding order as numbers, and why 10 days is 5

Your title gives two figures: 300 candles and 10 days. Everything else below is a labelled worked example. Replace each with yours. The fill weight matters most: the title gives none, so this page uses the series default of 200 g at 8% (16 g of oil and 184 g of wax a candle), which makes the order 60 kg of finished candle, 4.8 kg of oil and 55.2 kg of wax. If your wedding candle is a 100 g favour, every kilogram halves, but the day count below does not change.

The trap is 300 ÷ 10 = 30 a day. Half of the ten days cannot hold a pour that will be ready on time. The 72 hours are a planning judgement, not a rule: Jasmine's page states "a cure time of 48-72 hours" for soy, and many makers prefer a week or more before judging throw. A 10-day wedding order cannot give the last candles a week, so the guests' candles keep curing after delivery (the curing-in-transit post). If the client asks you to pour on day 8 to "catch up", the answer is no: that is a soft, unset candle in a box (the shortening-cure post).

Constraint A: melt capacity

You need 13.13 kg of finished mix on each full pour day (65 candles × 200 g, plus a 1% heel). Work out what each melting set-up can actually deliver in a day, using your own timed cycle. The worked example uses a 30-minute cycle for the Mini (melt flakes to temperature, add and stir fragrance, pour out) and 408 usable minutes in an 8-hour day.

So in this worked example the melt is the binding constraint. One Mini melter can pour 260 candles in five days; after 10 extras and a 4% buffer that is about 240 saleable, not 300. Even giving up the Sunday does not save it (54 a day needed, 52 possible). A second Mini at ₹2,360.00 doubles the melt. The 10 kg WAX MELTER also passes, but its page claims ("melt 9.5 liters of candle wax and create 80 candles at a time"; 80 candles from 10 kg is about 125 g each) describe capacity this order does not need: at 200 g a full melt is 50 candles. We sell the 10 kg melter. For 300 candles you do not need it.

A bigger batch also mixes differently. Moving from a 1-litre pot to 10 kg changes how wax heats, holds and distributes fragrance; if you do switch melters mid-order, treat the first full melt as a process check (the bigger-melter revalidation post).

Constraint B: containers and moulds

Jar candles do not cycle. Each candle sets in its own jar, so the container constraint is simply count and condition: 329 clean, checked jars (322 poured plus 2% for chips and breakage) in your workshop on day 1, and enough centring devices for one day's pour. At 65 pours a day that is 65 devices in use at once, reused each morning: 13 packs of Wick Centering Device (₹1,534.00). Check one jar from each carton against your approved sample (height, opening, base thickness); a different batch of glass can behave like a different jar (the slightly-different-jar post).

Moulded pillars do cycle, and they bind first. Moulds needed = candles a day ÷ cycles per mould per day, rounded up, plus spares. Demould time is not stated on CSI mould pages; use your own. In a worked example where a pillar sets well enough to demould by the next pour (two cycles in 24 hours, morning and evening), 65 a day needs 33 moulds, 35 with two spares. At one cycle a day it is 65 plus spares.

That is before the bigger problem: a pillar is a different candle. It needs a pillar wax (CSI's Soy Pillar Wax is ₹6,000.00 for 10 kg; 60 kg would be ₹36,000.00), a wick tested for a free-standing burn, and a fill weight you have weighed from your own mould, because CSI's mould pages state none. If you have not made this pillar before, it does not fit 10 days at any mould count. Mould arithmetic for longer timelines, including a six-hour demould, is the demould-time post, and full sculptural-order planning is the sculptural-wedding-candles post.

Constraint C: your team, day by day

People-hours are where the averages lie. Add up the whole order and it looks easy: 2,774 people-minutes, about 6.8 person-days across nine working days. But the work is not spread evenly. Packing cannot start until the first candles finish their 72-hour set on day 5, and from then on pouring and packing overlap. Wedding packing is slow: ribbon, tag, a box, sometimes a printed card. The worked example uses 4.5 minutes a candle for QC and packing, plus 1.0 minute to wick, 1.25 to pour and 60 fixed minutes on each pour day for weighing out, tending the melters and cleaning down.

One person can do days 1–4, 9 and 10. Days 5, 6 and 8 need a helper (3 helper-days; at a worked-example ₹700.00 a day, ₹2,100.00). Line that person up before you say yes. Packing alone is 24.1 hours across the order. If no helper exists, the order is a 250-candle order, or the packing standard has to get simpler, and that is the client's decision, not something to discover on day 8. The station-by-station version of this model is the maximum-capacity post.

The 10-day schedule and the materials

With two Mini melters and a helper on three days, the plan closes. Here it is as a schedule, then as a purchase sheet. The sheet assumes your proven candle is Luxury Soy Wax CSI 464 with Jasmine at 8% and an Eco C2 wick in your own 200 g jar; if yours differs, swap the products and keep the arithmetic.

₹183.77 a saleable candle is wax, oil and wick only, buffers included; it excludes your jars, labour, ribbons and boxes, freight and GST. CSI 464 is ₹507.40 a kilo from the 1 kg bag to the 10 kg, so six 10 kg bags cost exactly what sixty 1 kg bags would. On Jasmine the 1 kg bottle is ₹1.00 dearer than two 500 g, so 11 × 500 g (₹21,571.00) is ₹5.00 cheaper than 5 × 1 kg + 500 g. Eco C2 wicks are ₹9.44 each in every pack, so 330 is bought as 3 × 100 + 20 + 10, not a 500-pack. Ask whether all 11 Jasmine bottles can come from one lot; if two lots arrive, sniff and burn one candle of each side by side before mixing them into the run.

Accept, cut scope, or decline

Most orders have three levers: date, quantity and capacity. A wedding takes the first away. So the decision rule is: accept if your smallest constraint reaches 65 candles a day for 5 days with the candle already proven and the materials already in hand; otherwise offer the quantity your smallest constraint supports, or decline.

Four things are never traded for the date. The proven candle: this jar, wick, Jasmine and load, burned to the end before the order (development calendars are the new-fragrance post and the new-jar-fragrance-colour post; neither fits in 10 days). The 72-hour set. Colour: a custom wedding shade needs pilot batches judged in wax, not liquid (the dusty-pink pilot post); if it is not already matched, offer white. Burn checks during production: two a day, so a drifting batch shows while you can act. The full never-skip list is the never-skip post.

Then protect the yes, as practical judgement rather than legal advice. Put the sample approval, quantity, packing standard, delivery time and place in writing on day 1. Take an advance that at least covers anything you cannot reuse: ribbons, printed tags, a custom colour. Jasmine, CSI 464 and C2 wicks are standard stock you can use again; a bride's monogrammed tags are not. And agree in writing that changes after day 1 cannot be made in this timeline. A ten-day order has no room for a second sample round.

What to buy for this order

Five items, chosen on page statements, price and stock on 7 October 2026. CSI publishes no burn or throw data, so nothing here is ranked on performance, and each card assumes the material is already in your proven candle.

Argued against our own interest: skip the 10 kg melter for this order (a second Mini closes the gap for ₹18,880.00 less), skip the 1 kg Jasmine bottles, skip a new pillar range, and do not buy any of it until the bride has approved the sample in writing and paid the advance. If she has not approved by day 1, the honest reply is a smaller quantity, not a bigger order from us.

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