Confetti, Champagne and the Wedding Car Deposit

Ribbon along the bonnet is fine. A sign in the rear screen is fine. Rice, dry confetti, silly string and an open bottle in the cabin are the four things that turn a refundable hold into a charge — and saying so in advance has never cost anybody a booking.

Nobody publishes this. Every wedding car page in Los Angeles shows a confetti exit and none of them mentions that a deposit exists, which means the reader plans the shot in March and finds out the rule at the return inspection in July. That is a bad way to end a wedding weekend and an avoidable one.

So: what the deposit actually is, what is welcome on the car, what costs money and why, and the version of the confetti photograph that works without any of it landing on paint. If you are still choosing the car, the planning guide is the piece for that; the fleet and the rates are on the wedding car page.

What the deposit is, mechanically

It is a hold, not a payment. At the start of the rental an amount is placed against the renter's own credit card, and it sits there reducing the available credit on that card until it is released. The Federal Trade Commission's consumer guide to renting a car covers the mechanism under card blocking, and it is worth reading for one practical reason: if you are using the same card for the honeymoon, the hold is money you cannot spend while it is in place.

The amount depends on the car, from $350 at the smaller end of the fleet to $2,000 on the flagships. Every car couples actually book for a wedding — the Rolls-Royces, the Bentley, the Lamborghini — sits at the top of that range.

The hold is released 5–7 business days after the car is returned in acceptable condition. Not on the day, and not instantly, because the release is a bank process rather than a decision somebody makes at the kerb. Anything deducted is deducted against damage, excessive cleaning or a policy breach, and it comes with the invoice that produced it.

The honest headline: most wedding bookings get the entire hold back. This article exists because the ones that do not almost always lose it to the same four things.

The yes list

Decoration is welcome and it photographs well. The single rule underneath all of it is that nothing may touch the paint in a way that leaves anything behind.

• Ribbon across the bonnet, tied at the mirrors or the grille rather than taped. This is the classic image and it comes off in ten seconds.
• Magnet-backed signs on a steel panel, placed on a clean surface. Grit under a magnet is what scratches, so wipe the spot first.
• Clip-on or tied florals, coordinated with your florist, attached to something structural.
• A sign in the rear screen — inside the glass, where it cannot fly off at forty and cannot mark anything.
• Dried petals thrown at the couple rather than over the car, which is also the better photograph.

Tell us the plan when you book. Almost nothing on that list needs permission so much as it needs mentioning, and the version we have seen work is always the version somebody described in advance.

The no list, and what each one costs

Rice and dry paper confetti. The problem is not the sweeping, it is where it goes. Confetti finds door shuts, seat rails, the boot channel and — on an open car — the roof well, which is a fabric-lined cavity you cannot reach with a vacuum in twenty minutes. A roof well full of paper is a full interior detail rather than a wipe-down, and the difference between those two is the difference between nothing and a line on an invoice.

Wet or dyed confetti, and petals in the rain. Dye moves. Coloured paper sitting damp on a hot panel transfers, and pale leather takes dye out of a wet petal permanently. This is the one that surprises people, because the material looks harmless in the bag.

Silly string. Solvent-based, and we have watched it mark clear coat when it bakes on a black panel in the afternoon sun for an hour. Minutes matter with it, which means it is a risk that depends entirely on how quickly somebody notices — and at a wedding, nobody notices.

Adhesive of any kind. Tape, vinyl lettering, stickers, and suction mounts on hot paint. Adhesive residue on a dark car is a machine-polish job, and vinyl left on a sun-facing panel through an August afternoon leaves an outline behind when it comes off.

An open bottle in the cabin. Two separate problems, and the second is the serious one. Champagne in perforated leather goes sticky and then goes sour, and it is an upholstery job rather than a wipe. Independently of that, the California Vehicle Code prohibits open containers of alcohol in a vehicle on a highway, which makes the toast-in-the-back-seat picture a poor idea regardless of who is paying for the cleaning.

Smoking is its own category and it is not a judgement call: it is prohibited in every car in the fleet and it carries a cleaning fee automatically. That includes the cigar somebody lights standing beside an open door.

Your venue probably has a stricter rule than we do

Worth checking before you plan around ours. A great many Los Angeles venues ban rice and confetti outright in their own contracts, for reasons that have nothing to do with cars: birds, drains, gravel that cannot be swept, and a groundskeeper who has to clear it before the next event that evening.

Ask the venue first. It is common to find that the exit you were negotiating with us was never available on the site anyway, and it is much better to learn that in a planning email than from a coordinator stepping in front of your photographer.

The exit shot that works

The photograph everyone actually wants is a couple walking through something falling, with a car behind them. Note the geometry: the car is the background, not the target.

So aim the throw at the couple and shoot from the car's side of it. Use dried petals, hand-held ribbon wands or paper streamers held rather than thrown. If it is sparklers, hold them clear of paint and away from the fabric roof — a spark on a convertible roof is a hole, not a mark. Bubbles look wonderful and are soap, which dries as spots on a hot dark panel, so keep the wand pointed at the aisle rather than the wing.

And use an open car if you have one. A Dawn with the roof down puts the couple's heads above the beltline and gives the confetti somewhere to be that is not in front of their faces — which is the actual reason the open cars photograph better at an exit, rather than anything to do with the badge.

What a cleaning charge actually looks like

There are two levels and they are not close together. A wipe-down and a vacuum after a normal day is part of turning a car around, and it is not billed. A full interior — seats out of the way, roof well, door shuts, upholstery treatment — is a different job with a different cost, and that is what confetti in a cabin produces.

Which is why the four items on the no list are the four items on the no list. They are not arbitrary strictness; they are the four things that reliably move a car from the first category into the second. Everything else on a wedding day, including a hundred people leaning on the wings for photographs, comes out with a cloth.

The complete list of what may be deducted, and everything else that governs the booking, is on the terms page.

The cars this matters most on

Open cars and pale interiors are where a small mess becomes an expensive one. The closed four-doors are the forgiving end of the fleet.

Wedding cars, deposits and delivery →