Soap Wedding Favors
Cookies and soaps in the shape of cakes, and beautifully decorated, are always popular wedding favors. There is a wide variety of cookie cutters and soap molds ranging from hearts to a bride and groom. Again, if you would like favors to double as place cards either tie a piece of paper with the guests name onto the wrapped soap or cookie, or for more fun, write the guests name on the cookie with frosting!
For soap favors less than $1.00 per bar (soap, decorating and the whole shebang) try making your own bars instead of buying them. If you want to determine the exact cost per favor, you must determine the number of ounces of raw soap you will need. This is done by taking the number of ounces per soap mold (for example four) and multiplying that times the number of bars you need to make. Lets say you have a 4 oz. wedding cake bar of soap and need 100 bars. Multiply 4oz. by 100 bars to get 400 oz. of soap. Since bulk soap is sold by the pound, you will need to make the conversion from pounds to ounces. Divide 400 ounces (the amount needed for 100 bars) by 16 ounces (there are 16 oz. per pound.) The result is that you will need to order 25 pounds of soap.
We will assume that you do not know how to make soap from scratch, so we will lead you to sources for pre-made bases. This means you simply melt the base down in a microwave or crock pot and then add scents or color and then add to a mold. It is very easy. First, locate the soap base you will purchase and note the price. Divide 25 lbs. (the amount you need in the example) by $29 (the price for 25 pounds) which equals 86 cents per pound of soap. Since there are 16 ounces per pound and each of our wedding cake bars will be 4 oz. we know we will get 4 bars of soap per pound of soap. So we divide .86 by 4 which gives us 22 cents per bar. Pretty good price per wedding favor!
To determine your actual price per bar you would perform similar calculations for any coloring, additives, scents or oils you use in the soap. Also take into consideration any wrapping or ribbons used. Even with the additives we just mentioned, you can still make a wedding favor bar of soap for about 50 cents each.
Soap bases that make good wedding favor soaps because of their light color are castile soaps which you can buy at the aforementioned sites. White glycerin base is also excellent and economical. You can make these weeks, even months in advance as soap has shelf life of about 18 months.