Wedding favours are one of those details that sound simple until you are sitting down with a guest list of a hundred and twenty and a budget that has already been spent twice.
Here is a practical guide to getting them right, from someone who makes them.
Do You Actually Need Favours?
Worth asking honestly. Plenty of couples skip them entirely and nobody minds.
Where favours genuinely earn their place is when they do a second job — acting as place settings, filling out a bare table, or giving guests something to hold during the awkward gap between ceremony and dinner. If a favour is only going to be left behind on the table, that budget is better spent elsewhere.
The favours that go home with people are small, useful, and not made of chocolate that melts by the speeches.
When to Order
Earlier than you think.
Anything handmade takes time, and wedding season in the UK compresses everything into roughly May to September. Handmade favours typically need 4-6 weeks during those months, and that is production time, not counting the back-and-forth of agreeing colours and scents first.
A sensible timeline:
- 4-5 months before — decide roughly what you want and get quotes
- 3 months before — confirm colours, scents and quantity, and place the order
- 6-8 weeks before — final numbers confirmed
- 2-3 weeks before — favours delivered, so you are not chasing anything in the final fortnight
Order early enough and you can also get a sample first, which is worth doing if colour matching matters to you.
How Many to Order
Not one per guest.
Couples very often share a favour, children usually do not need one, and a proportion of your guest list will not turn up. The usual guidance is to order for around 80-85% of your confirmed numbers, then add ten spares for the inevitable.
If your favours double as place settings, that changes things — then you do need one per seat.
Matching Your Colours
This is where most of the disappointment happens, so it is worth being careful.
Colours look different in wax than they do on a screen or a fabric swatch. Wax is slightly translucent, so a colour tends to read a shade or two lighter than the dye suggests. Deep, saturated tones are harder to achieve than pale ones.
Two practical tips. Bring a physical sample of your actual colour — a ribbon offcut or a swatch from the dresses — rather than a screenshot. And if an exact match is critical, ask for a sample piece before the full run.
Where a precise match is impossible, a satin bow in your colour on a neutral wax favour usually looks better than a slightly-wrong-coloured wax anyway.
Choosing a Scent
The temptation is to pick your own favourite. Consider instead what a room full of people will smell like with a hundred of them on the tables.
A few things that help:
- Go lighter than you would at home. Florals, fresh linen and soft vanilla work well en masse. Heavy gourmand scents can become overwhelming in quantity
- Think about the food. A strong fragrance competing with dinner does neither any favours
- Pick something you will want to smell again. Guests will burn these months later, and the association is worth something
If the favours are boxed or bagged rather than loose on the table, this matters much less — the packaging contains the scent until it gets home.
Presentation Options
Roughly in order of cost:
- Wrapped — cellophane and a ribbon, simple and inexpensive
- Organza bags — soft, traditional, easy to add a name tag to
- Gift boxes — the most polished option, and the one that reads as a proper present
- Personalised labels — names, dates, or a thank you message, added to any of the above
If your favours are doubling as place settings, a tag with each guest's name solves two problems at once and saves you buying place cards.
Getting the Cost Down
Bulk discounts are standard on larger orders, so always ask rather than assuming the listed price is the price.
Beyond that: simpler shapes cost less than intricate ones, a single scent across all favours is cheaper than several, and wrapped presentation is significantly less than boxed. Choosing one of those three to economise on usually gets you where you need to be without the favours looking cheap.
A Few Things Worth Avoiding
Do not leave wax favours in a hot car or in direct sun on a windowsill at the venue. They will soften. They set again perfectly well once cool, but a tray of misshapen favours an hour before guests arrive is not what you need.
Do not order without seeing the actual scent first if you are sensitive to fragrance. And do not leave final numbers to the last week — handmade means made to order, not pulled off a shelf.
If You Would Like Ours
We make custom wedding favours in a range of styles — mini flower candles, individual wax flowers, wrapped favours, boxed sets — all hand-poured in soy wax and matched to your colours and theme. Bulk discounts apply on larger orders.
You can see the full range on our wedding favours page, or get in touch to talk through what you have in mind. We are happy to send a sample.