Picking the Best Car for a Wedding Entrance and the One You Leave In

A white Rolls Royce Phantom, 5.76 meters long with rear doors tall enough for a top hat, is the best car for a wedding entrance. At $2,995 a day, it's built around the back seat, which is where a bride in a full gown rides. The exit is a different job, and for that most couples do better in the Rolls Royce Dawn, a four seat convertible at $1,195 a day.

Picture the Phantom easing up to a hotel entrance in Beverly Hills. The chauffeur walks around that long hood and opens the rear door toward the back of the car. The guests on the steps watch you stand up facing them. Nobody ducks, and nobody folds a dress into a footwell. The moment is short, but it ends up in more photographs than almost anything else that day.

Why the doors decide the entrance

The entrance comes down to one motion, getting out of the car. Most exotics make that motion hard. A low coupe asks you to swing your legs out, grab the door frame, and push up from a seat a few inches off the ground. In a gown with a train, that's a two person job, and it never looks good on camera.

A Rolls Royce solves it with coach doors, rear doors hinged at the back so they open the opposite way from a normal car. You turn toward the curb and step out forward, standing, straight into the frame. This is the part most wedding car lists skip. Our own page on the Bentley Continental GTC says it isn't a bridal car at all. Two doors and a long door span make a gown genuinely hard to manage.

The best car for a wedding entrance is the Phantom

The Phantom is the flagship Rolls Royce, a five seat sedan built first for the back seat. Ours is the standard wheelbase car, not the extended version, and it's white with an orange and white interior. That pairing is the Phantom's bridal spec, and it photographs as one warm idea rather than a contrast. Parked square on against Beverly Hills stone and glass, the full length of the car fills the frame before the door ever opens.

The 6.75 liter twin turbo V12 makes 563 horsepower and 664 lb-ft of torque from barely above idle. So the car leaves the curb with no sound of an engine working, which is tuned for whoever rides in back. Your guests hear the door close, then nothing, and the car is gone. Rear steer, rear wheels that turn slightly with the fronts, helps a car this long turn tighter than you'd expect in a hotel forecourt.

Inside, the dashboard carries the Gallery, a sealed glass panel across its full width that holds a commissioned artwork. The rear compartment adds picnic tables, a chilled console, and motorized ottomans. It's the only Phantom we run, so one wedding closes that date for everyone else.

The Ghost, a Rolls Royce at a shorter length

The Rolls Royce Ghost is the entrance car for a couple who wants coach doors without the Phantom's length. It's shorter, easier to park, and still seats five. The white Ghost with the white interior is $995 a day. It's the Ghost that gets booked for wedding stills outside a hotel in Beverly Hills.

White leather is the easiest cabin to make look expensive and the hardest to make interesting. So shoot it in open shade around midday, where the leather holds its tone. Let the chrome grille carry the contrast the cabin doesn't.

Behind the wheel the Ghost is the lighter touch. You guide the steering with two fingers, and there's no rev counter, only a Power Reserve gauge that quivers when you ask for more. At a light the V12 idles so low you'll look for a tachometer that isn't there. Most Ghost bookings are self driven, which sets it apart from the Phantom.

The wedding getaway car is a different job

The exit happens hours later, and the mood has changed. The ceremony and the photos are done, and now the point is to be seen leaving together. That's what the Dawn is for. It's the last open top V12 Rolls Royce ever built, and with the roof down every passenger rides in view instead of behind glass.

The fabric roof folds in about 20 seconds, and it'll do it while the car is rolling at up to about 30 mph. So you can pull away from the reception with the top up and drop it a block later while the guests are still waving. The roof has six layers, and with it up the cabin is quieter than most hardtop sedans. The white car with its orange and black interior carries a $1,000 deposit.

Take it down Pacific Coast Highway through Laguna Beach at golden hour. The orange leather runs the length of an open white body, and the Spirit of Ecstasy leads on the hood. Sixty comes up in 4.7 seconds, but it arrives as a swell, not a shove. Nobody on the sidewalk is thinking about speed, they're looking at the two people in the front seats.

Where the Bentley fits and where it doesn't

The Bentley Continental GTC is the value convertible, and it has a place in a wedding weekend. It just isn't the bride's car. It seats four, and the roof folds in 19 seconds at up to 30 mph. With the top down near highway speed, the cabin stays calm enough to hold a conversation. The white GTC with the white interior is $795 a day, and the black one with a brown interior is $595.

Use it for the day after. Take a slow run along Newport Coast Drive, or shoot near the harbor in Newport Beach in the soft morning light that's common there, which keeps the white paint from blowing out. The V8 in the white car makes 500 horsepower and reaches 60 in 4.4 seconds through all four wheels. It's the calmest Continental we run, built for a cruise rather than a canyon.

The four cars side by side

These numbers come from our records for each specific car.

• Rolls Royce Phantom, white with an orange and white interior. 5 seats, 563 hp, 664 lb-ft, 0 to 60 in 5.1 seconds, $2,995 a day, $3,000 deposit, $10 per extra mile.
• Rolls Royce Dawn, white with an orange and black interior. 4 seats, 563 hp, 0 to 60 in 4.7 seconds, $1,195 a day, $1,000 deposit, $5 per extra mile.
• Rolls Royce Ghost, white with a white interior. 5 seats, 563 hp, 0 to 60 in 4.8 seconds, $995 a day, $2,000 deposit, $4 per extra mile.
• Bentley Continental GTC, white with a white interior. 4 seats, 500 hp, 0 to 60 in 4.4 seconds, $795 a day, $1,000 deposit, $4 per extra mile.

Chauffeur, drivers, and the ride home

Chauffeur service is available on request on the Rolls Royces. It's how most Phantom bookings are used, and it's how I'd book the entrance. You shouldn't be thinking about traffic on the way to your own ceremony. Either way, the car pulls up to the door the same.

If you drive the getaway yourself, the rules match any other rental. You need to be 18 or older, with a valid license and full coverage insurance in your own name. A larger deposit may apply under 25. Anyone else who'll drive goes on the contract before the rental starts and passes the same license and insurance check. We call each driver's insurance company ourselves.

If there's been drinking at the reception, a chauffeur or a sober driver takes the wheel for the ride home. A Dawn rolling up to a hotel in Newport Beach with the roof down looks exactly the same from the sidewalk either way.

Booking the wedding date

Wedding Saturdays are among the first dates to go, so a wedding car rental wants more lead time than a normal weekend. Four weeks is the safe number for the Phantom, since it's the only one we hold. The Dawn is a single car too, and we recommend four weeks for any weekend in it. Every car includes 100 miles a day, and a two day rental pools them into 200.

We deliver to hotels, homes, and venues across Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, the Inland Empire, and Palm Springs. The delivery fee is quoted by address. So give us the whole plan at booking, where the car starts, where the ceremony is, and where the night ends.

The entrance and the exit ask different things of a car. The entrance needs a door that lets you stand up into the photograph, and the exit needs a roof that gets out of the way. Book for the doors first, and the rest of the day usually takes care of itself.