How to sell wedding décor and mehendi favours online — what sells, how to ship the fragile things, and when to deliver them yourself

TL;DR

• • Sells best: welcome boards and name signs, photo props, haldi trays, mehendi favours in sets, place cards.
• • Personalised doubles the value, and a spelling mistake halves it. One labelled note field, repeated back.
• • Fragile shipping: boards between two cardboard sheets, no empty space, test parcel to yourself, photo before sealing.
• • Local first for heavy and bulky pieces: a pickup checkbox that removes the delivery charge, or your own delivery.
• • Bulk pricing for favours: full cost per piece, sets of 30, 60 and 100 as options.
• • Timing: favours two to four weeks out, décor the week of the function. Lead time on every page.
• • The free Home & Decor Store or Gifts & Lifestyle Store template, with the price-on-request button for custom boards.

What sells, and whether it travels

Two patterns in the table. First, the pieces that carry the couple’s names and date are the ones nobody can buy in a market, so they carry the margin. Second, the heavy, glass and fresh things do not travel, and pretending they do is how a seller loses a month’s profit to one broken carton. If your décor is handmade, the sourcing and pricing side is in how to sell handmade crafts online in India.

Names and dates: the personalisation field

A welcome board with “Riya & Arjun, 12 December” is worth far more than a board that says “Welcome”. It is also the product most likely to go wrong, because a spelling mistake or a wrong date is a remake at your cost and a very unhappy family on the morning of the function. Take the details in writing, once, in one place.

• The note field. Open the product’s Personalisation & extras card, turn on the text note and label it with the exact question: “Names and date exactly as they should appear on the board, e.g. Riya & Arjun, 12 December”. There is one note box, up to 500 characters, so ask for everything you need in that one line. It arrives with the order and shows in your dashboard.
• The photo upload. Turn it on when you want a reference: the invitation card, a sketch, a colour swatch, the font they like. Mark it optional unless you cannot make the piece without it.
• Paid extras. Add the things families ask for at the last minute, each with its own price and ticked in the cart: “Wooden easel +₹X”, “Second line of text +₹X”, “Gift box for the set +₹X”. Charged per item on top of the price.
• Repeat it back. Before you cut, paint or print, paste the names and the date back to the buyer on WhatsApp and wait for a yes. Keep that reply.
• Never guess a date. Muhurat dates vary by community, region and year. The family has theirs; ask for the date of the function the board is for, which is often the mehendi, not the wedding day.

Fragile shipping and packaging

• Boards travel flat, sandwiched. Cut two sheets of thick cardboard slightly larger than the board, put the board between them, tape the edges, and protect each corner with folded card or foam. Then bubble wrap, then a carton. A board in a bag is a board in two pieces.
• No empty space, ever. Fill every gap with paper shred or crumpled kraft paper. Close the carton and shake it; if anything moves, open it and add more.
• Hoops and frames go in a box the size of the hoop with the centre filled; a hoop with a hollow middle bends under the weight of the box above it in the van.
• Glass and ceramic are double-boxed: wrapped item in a small box, small box in a bigger carton with padding on every side. Or, better, sold locally.
• Measure before you price delivery. Couriers charge on whichever is higher, the actual weight or the “volumetric weight” worked out from the carton’s length, width and height. A big light carton can cost more than a small heavy one. Ask your courier, or Shiprocket or Shipmozo if you book through them, for the formula.
• Post one to yourself first. One test parcel across town, opened on video, teaches you more than any guide.
• Photograph every piece and the sealed carton before dispatch. Writing “FRAGILE” on the box helps far less than the packing does.

Lit and clay décor has its own tricks, covered in how to sell diyas and Diwali décor online, and the general shipping set-up is in how to set shipping charges for an online store in India.

Local delivery and pickup first

An online store does not have to ship across India. For décor, the best customers are often in your own city, and the heavy pieces only make sense there. A SitesPlaced store can serve a city honestly with three settings, all free:

• Delivery charge waiver. Under Settings → Shipping, turn on the waiver and write the checkbox label yourself: “I will pick up from Koramangala” or “Deliver within Jaipur city”. A buyer who ticks it pays no delivery charge. There is no serviceable-pincode setting, so name the areas you serve in words on the product and in the announcement bar.
• A delivery fee per product. Set “Delivery fee for this product” on the heavy or oversized pieces so your standard charge is not applied to a backdrop frame. A basket is charged the highest single fee in it, never the sum, and a product’s own fee is not wiped by the free-delivery floor.
• An express option. Under Delivery speed options, add an express choice with an extra charge for the family that needs the board by Thursday, only if you can really do it.
• Your own delivery. For a backdrop, a set of hoops and a tray set going to one house, a cab or a small van you ride in is often cheaper than a courier and infinitely safer. Charge for it as the product’s delivery fee and ask for the function address in the Order Notes field at checkout.

Bulk pricing for favour sets

Mehendi and haldi favours are sold by the set, 30 to 150 pieces, so price one piece completely and the set prices itself. Here is a worked example with round numbers for a bangle favour in a printed sleeve, sold in a set of 60. Use your own supplier prices.

Example only. The 2% payment fee is a round figure, not a quote; check your gateway’s rate card. If you are registered for GST, decide whether prices include it and ask your CA how to show it.

List the set as one product, “Mehendi bangle favours — set of 60”, and in its Options add a “Set size” with 30, 60 and 100, each at its own price and stock. The per-piece price can fall a little as the set grows, because the delivery share falls, and should never fall below what the sum says. If buyers like to mix (some bangles, some cones, some potlis), the free Build your own hamper page under Settings → Sales boosters lets them pick from your favour categories within limits you set, with a price list such as “any 60 for ₹X”. The full method for taking a set order with an advance and a date in writing is in how to sell wedding return gifts online; favours are the smaller, lighter cousin of the return gift.

Timing and lead times

Favours are ordered two to four weeks before the function, because they are made in bulk and personalised. Décor is ordered in the week of the function, sometimes the day before, which is why local delivery matters. Your lead time for each kind is your supplier’s days plus your making and packing days plus courier transit plus a buffer; write it in the first line of every product.

Put the month’s last order dates in the announcement bar under Settings → Branding (several lines rotate), and when you are full, turn on Pause ordering under Settings → Checkout with your own message, such as “Boards for this week are full; favours for next month are open.” Pre-orders and delivery slots are not features, so the words carry the promise. For cash on delivery on fragile décor, think twice: a refused carton comes back broken. Keep COD on with an extra COD charge so paying online is cheaper, or ask for payment online on boards.

The template and the free plan

Two free templates fit. The Home & Decor Store gives big photos, calm spacing and very little text, which suits boards and backdrops. The Gifts & Lifestyle Store has big category blocks, playful colour and a gift-first product page, which suits favours and props. Both show a product with no price as “Price on request” with an Ask on WhatsApp button, which is the honest way to list a fully custom board you quote by hand. Both carry the size chart popup, which you can use for a dimensions guide, and a video on each product. Other designs are compared in the best home décor website templates of 2026. Changing template later means making a new store, so pick once.

The store is free: ₹0, 0% commission, unlimited products, UPI and cards through your own Razorpay, PhonePe or Cashfree account, cash on delivery, WhatsApp checkout, coupons, invoices and an address like yourbrand.sitesplaced.site. Starter at ₹199 a month (or ₹199 paid once for 30 days with no autopay, or ₹1,990 once for a year) adds your own domain and removes the badge, and on every paid plan a store’s pages answer about 4× faster than on the free plan, about 75 ms instead of about 330 ms in our 28 September 2026 measurements on live paid stores. “Answer” is the moment the page starts arriving on the shopper’s phone, before the photos load. More wedding-season guides, and the business-from-home angle on favours and props, are on the wedding season hub and in wedding-season business ideas from home.

Frequently asked questions