How Much Should Wedding Favours Cost Per Guest? I Priced Mine Out

October 13, 2026

A pressed flower keepsake candle in its white gift box, tied with a ribbon and a small handmade tag

The short answer

Plan on $3 to $6 per guest. In Zola's 2026 survey, 56% of couples who gave favours spent $5 or less per head. A hand-poured keepsake costs more than that, so it earns its place only when your list is short, or when you give one per household rather than one per person.

The first question in every favour enquiry I get is the right one: what is this per guest? Colour, scent and ribbon all come after that number.

It is also the question the favour aisle is built to avoid.

Most guides never give you that number. I will, including mine, and the counts where I would tell you to buy something else instead. Mine are in Bridal Shower & Wedding Gifts.

A favour is not a gift. It is a thank-you with a ceiling on it, and the ceiling is lower than almost everyone expects.

Several pressed flower keepsake candles side by side, each with a different arrangement of flowers set into the wax — Favours from the same batch. No two tops are ever the same.

How much should wedding favours cost per guest?

$5 or less, for most couples. Zola's 2026 survey found 56% of couples who gave favours spent $5 or less per guest, about 23% spent under $2, and 20% spent $6 to $10.
$2 to $8 is the working range. Joy's 2026 favour guide says budget $2 to $8 per guest, and calls $3 to $6 the sweet spot.

So the planning number is $3 to $6 a head. Multiply before you look at a single photograph.

Do you give one favour per guest, or one per couple?

The Knot recommends one per guest by default, "when in doubt, hand one out", but says that for a larger, shareable item like a candle or a bottle of wine, one per household is enough.

That is the sentence that makes a keepsake affordable. If most of your list arrives in pairs, one per household brings your count close to half, and half the count at double the price is the same total.

Are wedding favours worth it, or do guests leave them behind?

Some do. Joy's guide puts it bluntly: if you cannot eat it, drink it or use it, most guests will leave it.

In their keep-rate table, food rates high. Candles rate medium. Generic photo frames, glass coasters and mints in a tin rate low: they feel impersonal.

I sell candles, and medium is still medium. A candle goes home when it does not look bulk-bought: different on every one, already boxed, not one of ninety identical things.

If your ceiling is $5 a head and your list is long, buy edible. I would rather say that than sell you eighty of the wrong thing.

What does a candle favour actually cost per guest?

My own price list, not an average. The Pressed Flower Keepsake is 9 oz, 8 oz of soy wax with a full ounce of fragrance, in a white ceramic bowl wrapped in jute, boxed at 5 × 5 × 2.5 in with a ribbon and a tag. It arrives ready to hand over.

Per guest, at my counts $25 each on its own · $22 each from 10 pieces · $20 each from 20, with the ribbon in your colour

$20 is not $5, and I will not pretend otherwise. At 150 guests this is the wrong favour. At 20 to 40, at one per household, or for a shower where you know every guest by name, the maths works.

Every candle in my shop can carry a custom label: your names, your date, your logo. On the boxes, a different name can go on every single one, so each guest finds their own.

Bulk does not go through the cart. Ten pieces or more, weddings, showers, christenings and corporate gifts, all start on the custom and bulk orders page. Tell me your count and your colour and I will come back with a quote.

Then give it four to six weeks. That is the lead time on my bulk page, from an approved design, because I pour every piece myself around hospital shifts. Count back from your date: a June wedding means writing to me in April. If your date is three weeks away, I am the wrong maker for you, and I would rather say so tonight than take the order.

What if your venue will not allow an open flame?

Plenty do not, and plenty of homes would rather have no smoke at all. For those rooms I make the Dried Flower Bowl, 15 oz, at $39.99, built to be warmed rather than lit. No flame, no smoke, no soot, and about 300 hours on a warmer against about 90 hours lit. It needs a warmer plate about 6 in across.

At $39.99 that is a gift for the mothers or the bridal party, not a hundred-guest favour.

Whatever you choose. Never leave a burning candle, or a switched-on warmer, unattended. Keep it away from children, pets, curtains and drafts, on a level heat-resistant surface, and never move it while hot, as the bowl gets hot too.

What to do tonight

Write your count and your ceiling per head, and multiply. That total is the only budget that counts.
Decide per guest or per household before you shop. It moves your total more than any product will.
Run the three-word test. Eaten, drunk or used? If it is none of the three, expect some to stay behind.
Count back six weeks from your date. Less than that and you want something off a shelf, not something poured.

From my kitchen table

I pour these at my kitchen table in Kitchener, around shifts at the hospital, pressing and placing every flower one at a time. Four years of markets has taught me which gifts people carry out carefully and which get left on the chair. The difference is almost never price. It is whether the thing looks made for somebody.

So here are my numbers again, plainly: $25 each, $22 each from 10 pieces, $20 each from 20. If $20 a head is close to your budget and your list is short, write to me and tell me your colour.