How to sell wedding return gifts online — quantities, a price that includes the packing, and how to take a 200-piece order on a free store

TL;DR

• • Quantities: 50 to 500, decided by the family. Always ask how many, by when and to which address, and add spares.
• • Price per piece, with everything in it. The item is often the smallest line once you add the box, the tag, your hours and the delivery.
• • One product per set, with options for 50, 100 and 200, each at its own price. A personalisation note carries the names and the date.
• • WhatsApp first, then the order. Turn on WhatsApp checkout so the buyer can ask before paying.
• • Advance by UPI, half on confirmation, balance before dispatch. Materials are bought only after the advance.
• • Samples are paid for and credited to the order. Photograph the approved one.
• • Lead time on the page, last order date in the announcement bar, and pause ordering when you are full.

Who buys, and what they are really buying

The buyer is almost never the couple. It is a parent, an aunt or whoever is running the wedding, and they have a list: the caterer, the decorator, the cards, the return gifts. They want to tick your line off the list and not think about it again. So what they are buying is certainty: that the gifts will look like the photo, that there will be enough of them, and that they will arrive before the first function.

That changes how you sell. A guest buying a dupatta wants choice. A family buying 200 return gifts wants three good options, a clear price per piece, a date they can trust and one person to message. Give them that, and you will get the order even if someone else is a little cheaper.

What to sell as a return gift

• Potli bags with dry fruits or chocolates. Light, keep well, look full. If you pack the dry fruits yourself you generally need FSSAI registration (foscos.fssai.gov.in); reselling sealed packs can be different. Confirm what applies to you.
• Small brass or clay pieces. A diya, a small idol, a bell. Heavy and fragile, so pack each one and add weight to the delivery line.
• Candles and scented sachets. Easy to theme by colour; candles can soften in a hot van, so avoid thin tapers in summer weddings.
• Jars of honey, ghee or pickles with a printed label. Food rules apply again; glass needs careful packing.
• Plants and seed kits. A small succulent in a painted pot, or seed paper. Popular for the mehendi, where the theme is green anyway.
• Printed or personalised boxes with the couple’s names, filled with two or three small things. This is where a seller with an eye for packing beats a wholesaler.
• Useful small things: coasters, keychains, hand-painted magnets, mini photo frames, a pocket mirror in a sleeve.

Whatever you choose, offer three price points rather than twenty designs, and make one of them personalised. Mehendi and haldi favours are a smaller, lighter cousin of return gifts and are covered in how to sell wedding décor and mehendi favours online.

Pricing per piece, with the packaging in it

The mistake almost everyone makes is to price the item and then “add a bit” for the box. Write every line down for one piece. Here is a worked example for a potli return gift sold in a box of 100, with round numbers. Use your own supplier prices; this is only to show the shape of the sum.

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 your prices include it and ask your CA how to show it on the bill.

Three things to notice. The item is less than two-thirds of the cost. Your own time is a real line, and it is the first thing sellers forget; if you give it away, a 200-piece order is two unpaid days. And delivery per piece falls as the box gets bigger, which is the honest reason a box of 200 can be a little cheaper per piece than a box of 50. Our free product pricing calculator runs this sum, and how to price your products explains the thinking.

How to take the order on a SitesPlaced store, honestly

Let us be plain about what the store can and cannot do. There is no minimum-order-quantity setting and no “request a quote” button. What there is works well for return gifts, because a return-gift order is really a conversation that ends in a payment. Set it up like this:

• 1. One product per set. Call it what the buyer is looking for: “Potli return gifts with dry fruits — box of 50”. In the product’s Options, add a “Quantity” option with the values 50, 100 and 200, and give each its own price (₹9,450, ₹17,500 and ₹33,000 in our example) and its own stock. One product page, three set sizes, each honestly priced.
• 2. A personalisation note. Under Personalisation & extras on the product, turn on the text note and label it yourself: “Names and wedding date for the tag, exactly as they should be printed”. The buyer’s answer travels with the order. There is one note box, so ask for everything you need in one line.
• 3. Paid extras. In the same card, add optional extras the buyer can tick in the cart, charged per piece: “Printed thank-you card +₹8”, “Upgrade to a rigid box +₹20”. Each extra needs its own label and price.
• 4. WhatsApp before the order. Under Settings → Checkout, keep “Show WhatsApp checkout” on so the buyer can send you the cart as a message and ask questions. If you want every return-gift order to start as a conversation, tick “WhatsApp is the only way to order” on this store. Your WhatsApp number is set under Store details.
• 5. The advance by UPI. Under Settings → Payments, fill in your Payment details: UPI ID, bank name, account number and IFSC. They print on the invoice, and a buyer who chooses the Bank transfer / UPI option sees them after placing the order. Ask for half as the advance, and send the invoice from the order as the receipt. If you prefer the advance to go through your own Razorpay, PhonePe or Cashfree account, a coupon code worth 50% on the set product lets the buyer pay half online now; the balance is paid before dispatch.
• 6. Order Notes at checkout. Also under Checkout form fields, turn on Order Notes and label it “Function date and delivery address contact”. It is free and it saves a message later.

The same approach covers school and society orders and anything else sold in sets; the general version is how to take bulk and custom orders on a small online store. If a company rather than a family is buying, the pitch and the paperwork differ, and corporate gifting orders for small businesses covers that side.

Lead times: the promise you must keep

Work your lead time out once and write it down. It is the sum of four things: the days your supplier needs to deliver the items to you; the days you need to assemble and pack the whole lot (time one piece, multiply, add a day); the courier’s transit time to the family’s city; and a buffer of at least three days, because something always goes wrong. For example, 4 supplier days plus 3 packing days plus 4 transit days plus 3 buffer days is a 14-day lead time. That is an example, not a number to copy.

Put the lead time in the first line of every set product’s description. Put your last order date for the month in the announcement bar (Settings → Branding); it can carry more than one line, and the lines rotate. When you are full, turn on Pause ordering under Settings → Checkout with your own message, such as “Return-gift orders for December are full. January orders open on 1 December.” Pre-orders and delivery slots are not features, so say the dates in words where buyers will read them.

Never state a muhurat date you were not given. Auspicious dates vary by community, region and year, and the family already knows theirs; ask for the date of the first function, not the wedding day, because the gifts are often handed out at the mehendi or sangeet.

Samples, confirmations and the one message that saves you

• Charge for the sample. One piece at the single price plus delivery, credited to the order when it is confirmed. A free sample attracts people who are collecting free samples.
• Photograph the approved sample on a plain background, in daylight, and send that photo with the confirmation. “Same as the sample” now means something.
• Send one confirmation message with the design, the count, the spelling of the names and the date as they will print, the price per piece and total, the advance received, the dispatch date and the delivery address. Ask the buyer to reply “confirmed”. That reply is your contract.
• Changes after the advance are a new quote. Say so kindly in the confirmation, before anyone asks.

Packing and delivering one big order

• Count into cartons of a fixed number, say 25 or 50, and write the count on each carton. The family will count at the venue; make it easy.
• Do not let the gift box be the shipping box. Gift boxes go inside a plain outer carton with padding and no empty space. Ideas for the boxes themselves are in packaging and gift-wrapping ideas for an online store.
• Send the spares in the same carton and say so. Five extra pieces cost you little and make you look generous.
• Deliver locally yourself where you can. For your own city, a hired van or a cab is often cheaper than a courier for 200 fragile pieces, and you see the boxes arrive. For other cities, book through your courier or Shiprocket or Shipmozo, and send the tracking number in WhatsApp. If one bulky set should carry a higher delivery charge than your store’s standard one, set “Delivery fee for this product” on that product. How to ship orders from home in India covers the rest.
• Avoid cash on delivery on bulk orders. A 200-piece parcel refused at the door is a disaster. The advance plus balance-before-dispatch structure means there is nothing left to collect.

The store itself

Everything above runs on the free SitesPlaced plan: ₹0, 0% commission, unlimited products, UPI through your own gateway account, cash on delivery, WhatsApp checkout, coupons and invoices, at an address like yourbrand.sitesplaced.site. The Gifts & Lifestyle Store template is built for gifting, with big category blocks and a gift-first product page. When the family shares your link in the wedding group and forty people open it at once, a paid plan helps: on Starter (₹199 a month, or ₹199 paid once for 30 days with no autopay) and up, 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, before the photos load. More wedding-season guides are on the wedding season hub.

Frequently asked questions