What to drive to your wedding

Steinbeck said, “A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” He was married three times so knew of which he spoke. But there is one part of that metaphorical journey that every couple can control – that very first leg.

Rolls-Royce Phantom or Morris Minor Convertible, helicopter or Piaggio? The choice of vehicle says as much about you as the outfit that you wear, and will be forever there in the album, a moving symbol of your first moments as a married couple.

I had to fold myself into the back but it was magic

What do people choose to head off in when they tie the knot? A quick canvass reveals tastes range as widely as they do in wedding dresses, from a vintage London cab painted white, a Fiat 500 in Tuscany (“I had to fold myself into the back but it was magic,” said the bride), a 1980s Mercedes-Benz SL Cabrio, a 1970s Starsky and Hutch-style Ford Gran Torino (“Starsky [Paul Michael Glaser] lived around the corner from me when I was little and he had this actual car in his driveway. He’d roar up the street. A very formative hetero-attraction experience”), a Piaggio scooter and a Triumph Spitfire that had been lovingly done up over the years by the groom and his father. “My husband and his dad were covered in oil at 11am on the day trying to get it running, which they did in the nick of time,” the bride told me. “I definitely wouldn’t recommend a sports car if you have a big wedding dress… obviously.”

“I would say that today there’s not a hyper-focus on the super-luxe,” says Alexandra Wood, head of Quintessentially Experiences UK, “it’s more about telling the couple’s story through that vehicle. Couples are looking to express themselves a bit more than an age-old classic car. We’ve seen some beautiful cars – stunning Morgans or some kind of ‘mongrel’ that’s been in the father’s garage for however long that he’s played around with.” 

I can’t see King Charles III with his head under the bonnet of the Aston Martin DB6 Volante Convertible that he lent William for his wedding, or the electric E-Type Jag that Harry used, but that’s the same down-home story the royal family was trying to tell. Both of those cars were, of course, also open-top, which can be a mixed blessing. “You’ll get the best photos with an open-top car option,” says leading New York-based wedding planner Augusta Cole. “But if they are going to take an open-top car from the ceremony to the reception, hair and make-up touch-up becomes quite the thing. We encourage our couples to consider doing that on the way to the more casual welcome party.” Or, if you can afford it, hire a cool open-top for the rehearsal (and nail the photos ahead of time). “We did an event on Sea Island in Georgia where we used this white Ford Bronco en route to the rehearsal dinner and there was a sense of levity because it wasn’t the big day – the images are so fun.” 

And, sweetly it seems, there’s still a place for bicycles: “I had one couple who made the trip on a tandem,” says Wood. “Two Raleigh bikes that had been moulded together. It was for a plush affair, but they’d ridden around central London on it throughout their early days as a couple. So simple and so them.”