How many wedding favours per guest: a hundred organza bags for one night

The pack is a hundred. So the real question is not how many sugared almonds go into a bag — it is how many packs you order, and nobody can hand you a per-guest figure, because no settled one exists. What exists is short arithmetic: how many women will be in the room, what you decide to give each of them, and the size of the pack.

Toz3iyat go round during the tasdira

The toz3iyat are the small gifts the bride sends round to the guests during the evening — hand to hand, or carried on a siniya, at the moment she comes out in a new outfit. The machta fills a hundred the night before and stores them flat in a crate, which means the number is settled long before the first guest is through the door.

In practice the bags wait in the back room and come out on a tray at the moment they are meant to, like everything else that night.

Count guests, not tables

A table is counted for the hall and for the caterer. A toz3iya is handed to a person. So count heads — and heads present at the moment the bags circulate, which is not quite the number on the invitation list.

How many per guest, though, is not settled here. One bag per woman, a bag and a flask for the closest, two sisters who came together and take one between them: it changes from family to family and from region to region, and we found no rule that imposes itself. A page that invented one for you would have you order the wrong number. Set your own figure — it belongs to you and to your family — and the rest is multiplication.

What is fixed is the pack: a hundred bags in a single colour.

From guest count to pack count, on the assumption of one bag per guest

Guests counted	Bags to fill	Packs of 100 to order
80	80	1
150	150	2
240	240	3
320	320	4

Round up, always. A hundred does not divide a guest count, and a guest count moves until the last day. Better to finish the night with ten bags spare than three short.

What fits in a 13 × 18 bag

The bag is about 13 × 18 cm, and that measurement decides the rest: eight to twelve sugared almonds, or a miniature perfume, or a soap, or a tealight, or a small piece of jewellery. What does not fit in 13 × 18 will not fit the night before either, and the constraint applies to all hundred at once.

Organza is sheer: it shows what is inside, and that is half the effect. The contents are looked at, not only carried home. Almonds in a single tone hold up behind the fabric; three mismatched odds and ends hold up much less. That is the only sorting rule worth having when you are torn between two fillings — does it read through the bag.

Bag or box: a hundred on one side, ten on the other

The pack size tells you what each object is for. Bags sell by the hundred, boxes by ten. That is not a packaging quirk: a hundred is a distribution — the same thing repeated for the whole room; ten is ten boxes, one piece presented in each.

The bag shows; the box presents. Organza lets the filling be seen; the box itself is seen before the gift inside it — card covered with flocked paper, velvet-effect outside with a matt feel, fold-over lid. It arrives flat and unassembled, folds by hand in seconds without glue, and flattens again for storage, so an unassembled pack takes the space of a card folder and several colours can be kept in reserve at the workshop.

The weights say the same thing another way: a hundred bags weigh 280 g with the packaging, ten boxes weigh 620 g. A bag is 2.8 g; a box is 62 g.

The box has a job elsewhere too: it is what goes into the tyafer and the tbek — the trays the groom’s family brings to the bride, each piece presented in its own. That is not this page’s subject.

Filling a hundred bags the night before

This is a production job, and it is done the night before rather than on the morning itself. The bags arrive flat with the drawstrings already fitted, so there is nothing to assemble. The closure is a double satin-ribbon drawstring that pulls shut from both sides in one movement, with no knot to tie — which is exactly what makes a hundred possible in one evening.

The time does not go on the closing, it goes on the counting. Eight to twelve almonds per bag, a hundred bags: between eight hundred and twelve hundred almonds counted out one at a time. Work in three passes rather than one — count, fill, close — and with a second pair of hands if you have them, because counting and pulling drawstrings are not the same movement.

Once filled, they store flat in a crate, the way they arrived and the way the machta carries them.

Colour is the only decision left

A pack is a hundred bags in one colour: white, ivory, gold, powder pink or burgundy. There is no mixed pack, and that has a direct consequence for the sum — wanting two colours means ordering two packs, so two hundred bags, whatever the guest count.

The colour is not chosen against the bag, it is chosen against the room: it is what ties the toz3iyat to the rest of the evening — the chair sashes, the tray cloths, the boxes. That is what we call the accord, and the whole catalogue can be browsed by accord. Which outfit calls for which tone is a different question, and the FAQ answers it.

Attar flasks: the favour that is also a station

The glass flasks sell in twelves, empty. They are handed to the women at the end of the tasdira with the musk and the orange-blossom water, instead of the sugared almonds or alongside them. Twelve, not a hundred: the quantity tells you what it is. It is not what each guest receives; it is what holds a station and is given out at the end of the night.

They are sold empty because the house fills them with its own attar, and because twelve identical bottles read on a tray in a way twelve mismatched ones do not. That imposes an order on the preparations: they have to be rinsed and dried completely before filling, so they start before the bags and not on the same evening. Attar is oily — a bottle keeps its scent and is not reassigned to another perfume.

And to clear up the most common confusion: this is not a m’rach. The m’rach is the long-necked sprinkler the guests are sprinkled from; these flasks are handed out one by one. What goes on the siniya, and in what order, is another page’s subject.

The sum, in three lines

• The number per guest is your decision and your family’s; no rule fixes it.
• The pack is a hundred, in one colour, and you always round up.
• The colour is taken from the room, and it is the last thing to decide.

The rest — eight hundred to twelve hundred almonds — is one evening of counting, the night before, with help.