echoing Allison's desire to have some "real" discussion here, let me pose a question.
A friend has asked me about the possibility of having me make invitations for her son's wedding. The Bride wants something non-traditional yet elegant and my friend though of some of my cards that she's seen. How do you suggest I go about deciding on a proper price to charge for handmade wedding invites with replies and thank-yous to go with!
It depends: Do you want to earn reasonable compensation for your time and effort, or do you want to make a little money for what will basically be your gift to the bride?
If the former, then figure out: a. How much your time is worth per hour (don't undersell yourself!) b. Realistically, how many hours you think it will take from design to completion c. The cost of materials
Multiply a times b, add c and that's your total. Don't be surprised if the mother of the groom is startled. In my experience, people who ask crafty friends to do this kind of work often think it will be cheaper than having the invitations commercially printed. It probably won't be, nor should it - hand-crafted work is simply more costly than mass production, because it doesn't benefit from economies of scale.
If you're thinking of it as a gift, then just charge for the supplies (and make sure to tell her it's your gift so she doesn't expect a gift on top of this).
Keep in mind that brides can be very ... picky ... in their quest for the wedding of their dreams. Be prepared for hissy fits if your work isn't perfect. Depending on the girl and how indecisive she is, you may wind up having to make numerous prototypes to get things exactly the way she wants them. If you're charging for your time, you should charge for that, too.
Decades ago, when I was in college, I did a little calligraphy, and a broke friend asked me to hand-letter her invitations. It was a small wedding, but I damned near killed myself on the things, and came close to losing the friendship over her Bridezilla behavior (she changed her wedding colors after I had half the things done, and demanded that I redo them, among other things).
Good luck. I don't think you could pay me enough to take on another wedding project.
Well, I'll pull my weight...
Much of my opinion echoes Pat's. I will add a few notes, though:
For me, a large part of my decision would be how many are we talking about... 200 invitations, my price would go up considerably - an added "aggravation fee", if you will. The more I have to make of the same thing, the more tense I get as I go along.
Before you quote her a price - to offset that surprise - I think it would be worth it to make sure that your friend *does* understand that the cost will definitely not be less than having invitations printed, and will actually be significantly more (unless you're talking a *very* small number and a very simple design).
Something to consider - perhaps suggest that you'd be willing to help the future-mother-in-law and the bride-to-be with designing and then making the invitations - rather than you doing it yourself, the three of you, plus perhaps some of the bride's friends could get together for an assembly line party to make them once the design has been decided upon.
For me, I wouldn't do it unless it was all of the following: a VERY good friend, I did it as a gift with them paying for the supplies, it was a simple design, and it was a small number of invitations (say, 50... maybe
100 at most).My pennies plus, Alison
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