Hi I have a friend who is getting married and she just asked me how much I would charge to make her wedding cake. It's 5 tiers squared, but she only want the bottom cake to be a real cake. I'm new a cake decorating and I really don't know how to charge for my cakes can you please help me out thanks in advance.

do a search for pricing. There are tons of great threads explaining.

When you do her cake just remember. It will take just as much time to decorate the dummy cakes.  Most people either do not charge enough as they figure they are only dummies. That is true and even though you aren't baking cakes that size they are still a lot of work.  Also, most people will think there should be a great price decrease because they are only "fake". You may have to explain this to your friend or you can decide to give a "friend" discount of a percentage of the total bill.  If you do give a discount I would write an invoice for the original price I would have charged and then show the discount and final $$$$ to be paid. If the discount is large enough then on the invoice I would also write or let her know that the discount given is also your wedding gift to them. 

Do look for different pricing threads to give you an idea of what you should charge, don't cut yourself short of money for all you do, friend or not. 

Those dummy tiers aren't cheap either!

I did and thank you for your help

thank you for the information I figured the dummy cakes would take just as long as a real cake, because people don't realize that it's not just baking the cake   they are paying for its the time and the hours of labor we are putting into decorate the cakes, also this will be a cake made from scratch not a box. and the ingredients aren't cheap (lol) Thanks again, you all have really given me some good advice on how to price my cakes from now on,