Wedding favors can be an added cost into your wedding, particularly if you are planning a larger affair. Instead of cutting down on the quality of your wedding favors or trimming your guest list so you can accommodate your wedding favor budget, focus your shopping on wholesale wedding favors.

Wholesale wedding favors are those which are sold in bulk, often during off-peak seasons. They may be last season’s trends or extra stock from some other wedding that was cancelled at the last minute but they are no less better than the ones you would have custom make with one exception – they are a lot cheaper. This will prove to be extremely helpful if you need to have a lot of favors at the wedding – you can have the wedding favors you want while keeping within your budget.

When looking for wholesale wedding favors, look at these factors:

- Seasonal. If you buy your wedding favors way in advance, you will be able to get very good deals on wholesale wedding favors. These could be from last year’s winter or spring wedding but seriously, no one will notice. They will still be seasonally appropriate for yours.

- Trends. If it was trendy at one point in time to have butterfly-based print, then you can be assured that anything butterfly will be sold at a lesser price once the trend has peaked. You can then pick up on the butterfly designs at half the price they were a year ago and still have the pretty wedding favors you always wanted.

- Bulk. Buying in bulk also means cheaper as most retailers will offer you a close-to-wholesale price or at the very least, a big discount, if you ordered a fair amount, like more than a hundred pieces, for instance. Your only problem would be storage but this is a minor issue as you can always “borrow” space from family members and friends.

- Uncommon gifts. If you are lucky, some very unconventional favors that you want may be available in stock to be disposed of quickly and cheaply to the first buyer available. These could be gifts in uncommon colors, for instance, or shapes. Before actually deciding on which wedding favors to have, it may be a good idea to check with the retailers first which ones they are prioritizing to dispose soon. They may just be the kind of favors you want for yourself. Remember, just as one man’s meat is another man’s poison, another man’s poison may be your meat!

- Overly common gifts. On the other hand, retailers may offer really good discounts on wedding favors that are so mass-produced they have too many in stock of. Older perishables such as potpourri, scented oil and bath salts, are usually the first to be offered a discount on as they have an expiry date before their scent wears off permanently.

Some of the most common wholesale wedding favors available are:

- Scented candles – these are often sold at a cheaper price if bought in bulk or sets. This saves you money as you can always break up the sets and give them out individually.

- Key chains or key rings – one of the most popular wedding favors, key chains are practical and in almost any design, pretty items to hang around. As such, they fit basically any wedding theme.

- Photo frames – clichéd as they may be, they are the easiest to get even at the very last minute.

- Place card holders – these have the same fate as photo frames. Absolutely common but very much in demand which means if you want them, they could be available to you at half their original price.

- Bookmarks – also a hot item at weddings, bookmarks are small enough to be carried around and stored even for long periods. This means availability of stock and lots of it, too so you can get a good deal.

- Coasters – just like the bookmarks, they are small enough to be stored. And because they may be less hardy than bookmarks, in that they can be texturally spoilt, cracked or have their surfaces peeled off, they are also one of the first few to be offered on discount.

One of the best ways to get good wholesale wedding favors is to time your wedding perfectly. Having a summer or spring wedding, for instance, gives you a better chance of getting wholesale wedding favors as retailers often forecast more people getting married during these seasons. This means there are more of such seasonally-themed favors available in stock which you may be able to buy at a better price – just as long as you buy them at least two seasons in advance.