We did candles as favors because my aunt found a case of little soy ones at a restaurant supply store for almost nothing, and I am a sucker for anything that smells like a porch in October. Forty of them, in a cardboard box in my trunk for three weeks. The wax was the easy part. The labels were where I lost a Sunday.
Here is the thing about candle favors. Nobody throws them away, which already puts them ahead of most of the stuff people grab off a favor table and leave behind. But a plain candle with a sticker that is crooked and slightly off-center looks like you ran out of time, because you did. The fix is dumb and small. A tag that fits the jar, a matchbox label that lines up, and ink that does not smear the second someone picks it up.
So these are the printables I actually used or would hand a friend who texts me at midnight asking what tag goes on a candle. I print one on plain paper first, hold it next to the jar, and squint from across the kitchen. If it reads, it stays. A couple of these are affiliate links, so if you grab one it tosses a little something my way. Does not cost you a thing.
A few of the links below are affiliate links. If you print something from one, it tosses a little something my way and costs you nothing.
The tag I tied onto every welcome bag, then onto the candles too
I bought this one for hotel welcome baskets and then realized halfway through it works on anything you can loop a string through. Including a candle jar. I printed a stack on kraft cardstock, punched a hole in the corner with the cheap single-hole punch from the dollar store, and tied them with twine I already had from Christmas.
You type your names and the date in and the layout holds its shape. I changed the wording four times the week before, swapping out a line that sounded too formal, and nothing slid around or broke. That mattered to me because I am not a designer and I will happily blame the file before I blame myself.
One gripe. The default size is built for a basket, so for a small 2oz candle I had to shrink it before printing or the tag swallowed the jar. Took me two test pages to land on the right scale. Print one, hold it up, then commit.
A bottle label bundle that I bent into matchbox covers
Okay, this one is technically for tequila bottles. I know. But the bundle gives you a bunch of label shapes and a font set that actually looks expensive, and I needed something to wrap our matchboxes so they matched the candles. The narrow horizontal labels were almost exactly matchbox width.
I edited it in Canva on my laptop on the couch, swapped the liquor wording for our names and a little line about lighting the candle when you think of us, and printed on sticker paper. Wrapped each matchbox, trimmed the overhang with nail scissors because I could not find the real scissors anywhere in the apartment.
The catch is the bundle is big and a little overwhelming when you open it. So many options. I spent forty minutes just clicking through before I picked one and forced myself to stop. If you are indecisive like me, set a timer.
Thank-you stickers that sealed the little cellophane bags shut
We bagged each candle in a small cellophane sleeve, and a bag with no seal just flops open and looks sad on the table. These stickers fixed that. I printed them round, on glossy sticker paper, and used them like a wax seal to hold the top of each bag folded down.
They are editable, so I put our names on some and just a plain thank you on others, and honestly the plain ones looked better. Less to read on something that small. I ran the first sheet at home, decided my printer was too streaky for white-on-color, and took the file to the print shop on Hartley two blocks over.
My one note. Peel them slow. The corners on round stickers want to curl if you yank them off the backing, and I wasted a few being impatient at 11pm the night before. Cheap mistake, but a mistake.
Plain hang tags for the candles I gave the bridal party early
I wanted something simpler than the welcome tag for the candles I handed out at the rehearsal dinner, and these hang tags are about as clean as it gets. A rectangle, a spot for a name, a hole at the top. That is it, and that is exactly what I needed at that point in the week.
I wrote each girl’s name by hand on hers with a thin black pen after printing, which I would not have had the patience for across forty guests, but for six people it felt nice. Tied them to the candles with skinny satin ribbon left over from a sample order.
The gripe is the cut lines are faint, so on textured cardstock I lost track of where to trim and got a couple wonky ones. Still crooked. Gave those to my husband and kept the good ones for the table.
Print-and-cut tags for when I gave up on scissors
By the time I got to the second batch of candles I was done cutting by hand. My thumb had a groove in it. These are set up for a cutting machine, print-and-cut, and a cousin of mine has a little Cricut she keeps in her laundry room, so I drove over with a bottle of wine and we ran the whole sheet in twenty minutes.
The registration marks lined up on the first try, which never happens for me, and the tags came out with these soft rounded corners that look way more finished than anything I cut with a craft knife. We used recycled brown cardstock and they matched the kraft welcome tags nicely.
If you do not own a cutting machine this one is a pain, full stop. You can trim them by hand but then you lose the whole point. Borrow a friend’s, bring wine, make an afternoon of it.
A baby tag I repurposed for the candles at the couples shower
This one is meant for a baby shower, and no, I do not have kids. But a coworker was throwing me a little couples shower before the wedding and wanted to send guests home with mini candles, and the layout on this tag, with the cute illustrated frame, was softer than the formal wedding stuff. Fit the vibe of a backyard afternoon better.
I swapped the baby wording in Canva for a line about a warm thank-you and printed them on plain matte cardstock at home. No print shop run for this one, the colors were light enough that even my streaky printer behaved.
The one thing. The illustrated border is the whole personality of the tag, so if your candles are a moody dark color it reads a little mismatched. Mine were cream, so it worked. Check yours against the jar first.
Heart tags for the spark theme that I leaned into too hard
We had a loose little spark theme going, candles and matches and a sign that said something about two hearts catching fire that I now find slightly embarrassing. These heart-shaped tags went on the candle jars and I will admit I went overboard. They are shaped, comes in a few file types, and I used the cut-ready version on my cousin’s machine the same afternoon as the eco tags.
The heart shape is genuinely sweet on a small round jar, better than a square tag fighting the curve. I wrote the table number on the back of each so they did double duty, tag and place marker, which saved me buying a separate thing.
My quibble is the point at the bottom of the heart is delicate and a couple tore where the string went through. I moved the hole up higher into the body of the heart and that solved it. Punch high, not at the tip.
What People Keep Asking
Are candle favors worth it?
Honestly? Yes, more than most favors. I watched people pocket the candles and leave behind the little bags of almonds at the table next to them. A candle gets used, or at least kept on a shelf, which is more than I can say for the personalized koozies from my friend’s wedding that are all in a junk drawer somewhere.
The worth-it part hinges on getting them cheap, though. If you pay full retail per candle it stops being a favor and starts being a budget line that hurts. We got ours from a restaurant supply place, plain jars, and the printables did all the dressing up.
What tag fits a candle?
Depends on the jar, which I learned by printing a basket tag and watching it dwarf a tiny 2oz candle on my kitchen table. For small jars I went with the heart tags and the plain hang tags, both small enough to sit on the curve without flopping over.
If your candle is taller, like an 8oz, a regular rectangular hang tag tied at the neck looks right. Just print one on plain paper, set it next to the actual jar, and back up across the room. If it looks like the tag is wearing the candle instead of the other way around, shrink it.
How do I keep candle favors cheap?
Buy the candles in bulk from somewhere that is not a wedding store, because the second the word wedding is attached the price doubles. Restaurant supply, a warehouse club, sometimes a craft store clearance bin in January. My aunt found ours and I still owe her for it.
Then do the labels yourself with printables instead of ordering custom-printed jars, which is where the real markup lives. A few dollars for a template, some cardstock and sticker paper you probably half have already, and an afternoon you were going to spend stressing anyway. Borrow a friend’s cutting machine if you want the corners clean without buying one.
Before You Print a Stack
If I did it again I would still do candles, and I would still print my own tags, but I would start the cutting a full week earlier instead of the Sunday before. My thumb remembers that weekend. So does my husband, who got handed the crooked rejects to hide in the back of the table.
Pick one or two of these, not all seven, and match the tag to your actual jar before you print a stack. The candles are the easy part. The tag is the bit people pick up, turn over, and read while they wait for the bar, so it is the one worth a test page and a squint from the couch.