How much should I charge a friend of a friend for designing a wedding invitation package?

Mak it a wedding gift….
Years ago I photographed weddings. For my friends I did it as a gift.

yeah ditto on gift. unless it is OODLES of money for you to do this. i dont even know what marriage gifts cost these days. oh wait. its a FRIEND of a FRIEND. sorry.

see if you wanted to check out other places, you could try sites like this one http://www.irasperipheralvisions.com/wedding_invitations.htm but their entire costs probably includes the actual printing cost too.

i am kind of surprised this was not mentioned at your first meeting (as the control freak that i am i would have asked you what you charge).

As it’s sort of a favor to your friend, I would take whatever the friend-of-a-friend would have paid to a professional (as determined by internet research as artemis suggested) and then give a 10–20% friend-of-friend discount.

I don’t know what your friend’s friend budget is, but to get all of that from a store that specializes in wedding invitations, we’re talking $750 and up. You can find stuff cheaper, but it’s the kind of the thing where you get what you pay for, and paper is generally expensive.

My suggestion is, talk to the bride directly and ask her what her budget is, and then design accordingly. Whatever your normal mark-up would be, give her a 25% discount.

I have to say, I was shocked at the prices—what I wanted would have cost A LOT—so I bought the materials myself and did my own design. I used Paper Source (it’s online), and they were great. The quality of the paper was just what I wanted. It still ended up costing me about half of what I would’ve paid if I’d gone through a store, though. If she wants to save a significant amount of money, it’ll be largely on the materials end, not on the design end.

Before you quote her a price, find out what she wants, and on what kind of paper and envelopes. Then you’ll know better the price of the whole package.