A Wedding Order Requires Custom Fragrance, Custom Colour and Custom Packaging — How Much Extra Development Time Should I Build into Production?

The order and the three custom elements, as numbers

The title gives no figures, so this is a worked example to replace with your own: 600 candles of 200 g in your own jar, at 8% (16 g of oil and 184 g of wax each, load as a share of total weight), plus 12 extras (three client samples, four retains, five QC burn candles) and a 4% loss buffer: 638 pours. You pour 60 candles a day, so production itself is 11 days. The client wants three things nobody has made before: a signature fragrance (you will propose a blend of two CSI white florals), a blush colour matched to their palette, and a printed label and sleeve with their names and date.

If you are deciding whether the fragrance must be final before you buy bulk wax and wicks, that is 6345; this post is only about time.

What waits for what

Three dependencies decide the calendar. Colour waits for fragrance. Fragrance oils carry their own tint, and some contain vanillin, which commonly yellows or browns wax over time; Gardenia’s page states 0.2% vanillin, Jasmine’s states 0%, and a blend at 8% is part of what the client sees. A blush approved in unscented wax can shift once the blend goes in, so a direction ladder is useful early, but the approval is made in the final blend. The wick waits for both. The approved load and the dye both change how a candle burns, so the wick bracket burns the coloured, scented candle. Packaging waits for almost nothing: the jar and lid sizes (fixed already, because the jar is your standard one) and, unless you design around them, the scent name and the print colour.

The four tracks and their day ranges

Fragrance: 18 days, and why the cure cannot be skipped

The sample oils arrive (four days in the plan; we do not publish dispatch or transit times, so confirm on WhatsApp). Round one is eleven candles: each candidate at 6, 8 and 10% (inside both the oils’ stated 10% and the wax’s stated 13%), plus two blend options at 8%. The Jasmine and Gardenia pages both give a 48–72 hour cure for soy before testing; the plan allows four days and then three days of burn sessions, because a hot throw judged on day one judges the wrong candle. Courier and client decision take five more days. The cure-time question under deadline pressure has its own post: can you shorten cure for a corporate order.

Colour: a direction early, an approval late

The dyes arrive with the oils, so a direction ladder (three or four shades in unscented wax) is poured on day 4 and shown to the client by day 9. That narrows the final round to two or three shades poured in the approved blend on day 19. They cure four days before anyone judges them, because soy commonly looks different freshly set than cured, and the client approves in daylight on day 27. The pilot-batch count for a custom colour is 6342.

Packaging: the long track that is rarely the critical one

Printing feels like the risk because it takes longest in one block. But printed labels are only needed when you start packing, which in the plan is day 46. Designed in a neutral palette with the scent name on an in-house sticker, packaging arrives on day 22: 24 days of float. If the print must match the candle’s colour, the final proof cannot be signed until day 27 and packaging arrives on day 38, leaving 8 days. If your printer then takes 18 days instead of 8, it arrives on day 48, 2 days after packing should start. That is the one combination that puts packaging on the critical path.

Critical path, float and buffer

Add the chain: oils 4, fragrance work and decision to day 18, final colour pour, cure, courier and decision to day 27, golden sample on day 28. Nothing else is longer: the wick finishes on day 26 (one day of float), packaging on day 22. The same tasks in strict series (each one waiting for the one before) take 58 days; overlapping them saves 30 days without shortening a single cure.

The buffer, and what it is for

The 4-day buffer (14% of the critical path) covers one slipped courier or one slow client decision. It does not cover a second fragrance round: that adds 13 days because the whole chain after it moves, and a second colour round adds 9. Rather than inflate the buffer to absorb rounds the client may not need, include one round of each in the plan and price extra rounds in days (and money: costing samples and rounds is 6375).

How to quote development time

Half the critical path is the client’s time: two courier legs and two decisions. So quote development as days from the advance, conditional on dated decisions, and turn those into calendar dates for the client. From an order on Wednesday 7 October 2026: fragrance decision due Sunday 25 October 2026 (day 18), colour decision due Tuesday 3 November 2026 (day 27), golden sample signed Wednesday 4 November 2026 (day 28), delivery Wednesday 25 November 2026 (day 49).

The decision rule, with the settling numbers. The client asks for delivery on day 40 (Monday 16 November 2026). The full custom plan needs day 49, so as it stands the answer is no. Offer two choices in writing: keep all three custom elements and move delivery to Wednesday 25 November 2026; or keep the custom colour and print but use a proven oil from your range, which removes the fragrance track and brings delivery to day 40 (Monday 16 November 2026), exactly the client’s date, with the 4-day buffer still in it. What you do not offer is the full custom plan with a three-day cure.

What to buy at each gate

The development stage is small money: ₹5,807.40 of CSI materials (five 100 g bottles, two dyes, 4.5 kg of wax, a wick bracket), plus your jars, couriers and hours, for ₹10,497.40 in the worked plan, ₹17.50 a candle across 600. Round one uses 68.8 g of Jasmine, 59.2 g of Gardenia and 48 g of Raat Ki Rani. The 11 colour, wick and golden candles then need another 176 g of whichever blend wins, more than the first bottles have left, so the two shortlisted oils get a second 100 g bottle on day 5, the day the shortlist is made; they arrive long before the day-19 colour pour. The bulk is bought gate by gate.

Two notes on the oils. Jasmine is cheaper in 500 g packs than in 1 kg (₹1.00 per kilo), so the purchase is 12 × 500 g + 2 × 100 g. Gardenia’s 1 kg costs ₹2.00 more than ten 100 g bottles, so 41 × 100 g + 50 g would be ₹8.00 cheaper than 4 × 1 kg + 100 g + 50 g; we would still buy the kilos, because 42 bottles is more handling and more chances of mixed lots for a trivial saving. Ask us on WhatsApp whether each oil can come from a single lot; if it cannot, compare the lots side by side before mixing them into the order.

Products for the development stage

The three candidate oils, the dyes, the wax and the plain inner box. Nothing here is ranked on performance (CSI publishes no burn or throw data); the oils are chosen on their stated notes, stated loads and stated vanillin, which is what matters for the colour track.

Frequently asked questions