Terms of use

1. What this site is

lapartylights.com is run by LA Party Lights ("LA Party Lights", "we", "us", "our") from Los Angeles, California. In these terms, "you" means whoever is using the site — someone planning a celebration, someone browsing, a business with a listing, or a planner working on a client's event.

By using the site you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, please do not use the site. If you are agreeing on behalf of a company, you are confirming you are allowed to bind it.

You need to be 18 or older to hold an account. Booking a vendor means entering into a contract, and a minor cannot do that. The site is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect anything from anyone under 13.

2. Your account

An account is free. There is no card, no trial and nothing to cancel.

• Give us a real name and an email address you actually read. Enquiries and replies go to that address, and a business deciding whether to answer you is looking at a real person.
• Your password is yours to protect. Anything done through your account is treated as done by you, so tell us straight away if you think somebody else is in it.
• One account per person. Do not share it, sell it, or make one under someone else's name.
• You can delete your account at any time. See the privacy notice for what happens to your information when you do.

3. We are not part of your booking

This is the most important section on the page.

Every business and every performer listed here is independent. They are not our employees, our agents, our partners or our subcontractors, and we do not control them. When you hire one, the agreement is between you and them — the price, the hours, the deposit, the cancellation policy, the refund, the insurance, the licence, the equipment and the result.

We are not a party to that agreement. We do not take a commission on it, we do not hold your money, we do not process the payment, and we cannot enforce either side of it. Nothing on this site is an offer by us to supply an event service, and nothing a vendor says on their listing is a promise made by us.

Read what you sign. Get the important things in writing — what is included, when they arrive, what happens if it rains, what happens if you cancel, and who pays for what. Pay in a way you can trace and dispute.

4. What we check, and what we don't

Being clear about this is worth more to you than a badge would be.

We do: read every listing before it goes up, remove businesses that we find are misrepresenting themselves, and look into complaints people send us.

We do not: verify licences, permits, insurance, bonding, certifications, tax status or immigration status; run background or criminal checks; inspect equipment; attend events; audit anybody's references; or confirm that a photograph on a listing is the vendor's own work.

So a listing on this site is not a recommendation, an endorsement, a rating, an accreditation or a guarantee of quality, safety or legality — and no ordering, ranking, category, tier or badge should be read as one. Search results are influenced by how a listing matches what you typed, and by paid placement where it is marked as such (see §9).

Before you hire anybody for something that matters, ask to see their licence and their certificate of insurance, and check the name on it matches the name on the invoice. Some work in California needs a licence by law — including contractors, security personnel, and anyone serving alcohol. That is on the vendor, and it is worth confirming.

5. Requests and introductions

When you send an enquiry, describe an idea, or ask us to find someone, here is what actually happens:

• Nothing is forwarded automatically. Every request lands in a queue and a person reads it before it goes anywhere. We may edit out contact details, decline to pass a request on, or come back to you for more first.
• You need an account before we act on a request. Describing an idea or naming a business you love is free, and setting the account up takes a minute with no card. It is what lets the answer come back to you rather than sit in a queue. Anything you have already written is held in your own browser and sends itself once you are in — you will not be asked to type it twice.
• Where a request suits more than one business we may send it to several at once. What they see is the request. Your phone number and your address are not part of it.
• Where we give you a reference for a request, we may close or cancel it, and we will say why.

We do not promise that anyone will reply, that anyone will be available, that anyone will be affordable, or that we will find you somebody at all. An introduction is an introduction; from that point on §3 applies.

6. Invitations and guest lists

If you put other people's details into the site — a guest list, an invitation, an RSVP — you are handing us information about people who never agreed to anything with us. So:

• You confirm you have those people's details lawfully and are entitled to use them to invite them to your event.
• We hold that list for you. We do not market to your guests, do not add them to any list of ours, and do not pass them to vendors or sponsors.
• Invitations are sent as your invitation, not ours.
• If you send invitations by text message, that is your message to your guest. Text messaging to people who have not agreed to it is regulated in the United States under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and the penalties are per message. Invite people who are expecting to hear from you.
• Delete a guest list and it is gone from our records, subject to ordinary backup cycles.

7. What you post

Reviews, photographs, descriptions of your event, messages, referrals and anything else you put on the site stay yours. You are not signing your work over to us.

You do give us permission to store it, display it on the site, and show it to the people it is meant for — which is what makes it appear at all. That permission is worldwide and royalty-free because the site is on the internet and free to use; it lasts as long as the content is up, and ends when you delete it, except for copies already made in ordinary backups.

You confirm that what you post is yours to post — that you took the photograph or have the right to use it, and that anyone identifiable in it is content to appear. Do not post a photograph of somebody else's work as your own.

We can remove anything that breaks these terms, and we may decline to publish something without removing it. We do not have to monitor what is posted and we are not responsible for what other people put here.

8. If you are a business or a planner

Everything above applies to you too, and so does this:

• Describe what you actually do. Prices, availability and inclusions must be accurate when you publish them and corrected when they change.
• Hold the licences, permits and insurance your work requires, and be able to produce them when a customer asks.
• Only post work you made, or work you have permission to show. Client photographs need the client's agreement.
• You may post to the feed once per day. Edit it as often as you like — it keeps its place in the thread. This is a fairness rule, not a technical one: without it, whoever posts most often owns the page.
• Answer the enquiries you receive, even when the answer is no. A business that collects introductions and never replies will be removed.
• Use what you receive here only to respond to that customer. A guest list, a phone number or an event address obtained through this site is not a marketing list, and adding somebody to one is a straight breach of these terms.
• Do not use the site to recruit other listed businesses, to scrape the directory, or to run a competing directory from what you find here.

We can decline, suspend or remove a listing. Where we do it for anything other than an urgent safety or legal reason, we will tell you why and give you a chance to answer.

8b. What listing costs

We are in beta, so listing is free and nobody is being charged. When that changes you will be told before it happens, not after — and founding businesses always pay less than whoever joins later.

The rest holds whatever the current state is:

• The directory is free for people hiring. That does not change. Searching, comparing, saving and enquiring cost a customer nothing, ever.
• We take no commission. Whatever you agree with a customer is between you and them, and they pay you directly. We are not a party to it and we do not hold the money.
• Listing is priced by trade, on the size of a typical booking in it. A sparkler company clearing three hundred dollars on a night and a ballroom clearing thirty thousand do not pay the same.
• Founding businesses always pay less than whoever joins later. That is a promise about your price relative to later ones, not a promise of a fixed number forever.
• You will be told before you are ever charged, with enough notice to decide against it, and a first month free before any charge applies.
• Cancelling is one click and takes your page off the directory immediately. Nothing is deleted, so coming back is a button rather than another evening.

9. Sponsors and paid placement

The site is free to use because businesses pay to appear in the sponsor slots. Those slots are advertising and they are marked. A sponsor's page on this site is that sponsor's own copy, and links out to a sponsor carry the sponsored attribute so that search engines and screen readers can see what they are.

Paying for a slot does not buy a rating, a review, a place in search results, or any statement by us that the sponsor is good at their job. We do not sell endorsements. If we ever recommend a business by name and we were paid for it, it will say so on the same screen, in the same size type.

10. Events and tickets

The events listings point at things happening around Los Angeles. Where an event sells tickets, the link goes to somebody else's site — the promoter, the venue or a ticketing company. We do not sell tickets, we are not a ticket agent or a reseller, and we take no part in the sale.

Your ticket is between you and whoever sold it, including the refund policy if the event is cancelled or moved. Dates, prices, line-ups and venues change; check with the organiser before you travel. Age restrictions and door policies are the venue's.

11. Messages we send you

There are two kinds and they work differently.

Messages about your account — confirming your email, resetting a password, telling you a vendor replied, or telling you something changed here. These come with the service and you cannot switch them off while you hold an account.

Marketing — ideas, offers and news from us and from businesses listed here. This is off unless you turn it on. The box is not pre-ticked, we record the date you turned it on and the date you turned it off, every message has an unsubscribe link, and you can switch it off in your account at any time. We honour an unsubscribe promptly and in any event within ten business days, as CAN-SPAM requires.

We do not sell or rent your email address. Turning marketing on means we may send you things about partner businesses; it does not hand them your address.

11b. Paying a business through this site

Some businesses here show a Book & pay button. Read that button carefully, because it is not what it looks like on most websites:

• It opens that business's own checkout, run by their own payment company. You are paying them, not us.
• We never see your card details. No card field on this site belongs to us; there is not one anywhere in this application. We hold no card numbers because we are never given any.
• We do not hold the money and we take nothing out of it. Not a fee, not a commission, not a percentage.
• The price, the deposit, the balance, the refund policy and the cancellation terms are between you and them. Ask before you pay.
• If something goes wrong with a payment, the business and their payment company are who can fix it — and your card issuer is who can reverse it. We can put you back in touch, and that is honestly the extent of it.

We check that the button points at a real payment company before it can be saved. That is a guard against a fake checkout page being shown under our name; it is not a check on the business, their prices or their honesty, and §4 still applies to every one of them.

12. Things you must not do

• Post anything unlawful, threatening, harassing, hateful, obscene, defamatory or deceptive, or anything that invades somebody's privacy.
• Impersonate a person or a business, or claim a listing that is not yours.
• Write a fake review, pay for reviews, or review your own business or a competitor's. In the United States this is not merely against our rules — the FTC treats fake reviews and undisclosed paid endorsements as deceptive practices.
• Scrape, crawl, harvest, bulk-download or systematically copy the directory, the listings or anyone's contact details, by hand or by machine.
• Use the site or anything taken from it to train a machine-learning model, or to build or supply a competing directory.
• Send unsolicited commercial messages to anyone whose details you found here.
• Break or work around any security or rate limit, probe the site for weaknesses without our written permission, or try to reach data that is not yours.
• Interfere with the site's operation, or place a load on it designed to degrade it for other people.
• Do anything here that breaks a law, or that helps somebody else break one.

Found a security problem? Tell us at [email protected] before telling anyone else, and give us a reasonable chance to fix it. We will not pursue anyone who reports a problem in good faith and does not exploit it, access other people's data, or disrupt the service.

13. Copyright

The site itself — its design, its text, its code and its marks — belongs to us or to the people we licensed it from. Listings and posts belong to whoever made them.

If something here infringes your copyright, write to [email protected] with the subject line Copyright and include, as 17 U.S.C. §512(c)(3) requires:

1. your signature, physical or electronic;
2. identification of the work you say has been infringed;
3. the URL of the material you want removed, precisely enough for us to find it;
4. your name, address, telephone number and email;
5. a statement that you believe in good faith the use is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent or the law;
6. a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information is accurate and that you are the owner or authorised to act for them.

We remove infringing material and repeat infringers lose their accounts. If your material was removed and you believe that was wrong, send a counter-notice to the same address. Please note that §512(f) makes a knowing misrepresentation actionable — in either direction.

14. Nothing here is professional advice

Checklists, budget tools, timelines, suggestions and anything a matching tool produces are there to help you think. They are not legal, financial, tax, insurance, safety or permitting advice, and they are not a substitute for asking somebody qualified.

Events have rules attached — permits for amplified sound and street closures, fire and occupancy limits, food handling, alcohol service, generators, drones, pyrotechnics, bouncy castles and the rest. Which ones apply depends on your venue, your city and your date. Check with your venue and your local authority. We do not do that for you and we are not responsible when it is not done.

15. Interruptions, changes and endings

We will keep the site up and working as best we can, but we do not promise it will always be available or always be free of faults. We may change features, add them or take them away.

You can close your account whenever you like. We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, or where we have to for a legal or safety reason. Unless it is urgent, we will tell you first and give you a chance to put it right. Sections that by their nature should outlive the account — §7, §16, §17, §18, §19 and §20 — carry on after it ends.

16. Disclaimers

The site is provided as it is and as available. To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement.

In particular, we do not warrant that any listing is accurate, current or complete; that any business is licensed, insured, qualified, available or honest; that anyone will respond to you; that an event will happen as listed; or that the site will be uninterrupted, secure or error-free.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

17. Limits on what we owe

To the fullest extent the law allows, LA Party Lights is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost business, lost data, or the cost of substitute services — including anything arising out of a booking made through the site, a vendor's performance or non-performance, or an event that did not go as planned.

Our total liability to you for everything connected with the site is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim (for most people, nothing — the site is free) or one hundred US dollars.

What this section does not do. Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited. Under California Civil Code §1668, a contract cannot exempt anyone from responsibility for their own fraud, wilful injury to the person or property of another, or violation of law, whether wilful or negligent — and this section does not attempt to. It also does not limit liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for gross negligence.

These limits apply even if a remedy fails of its essential purpose, and they reflect the fact that the site is provided free of charge.

18. If your use costs us something

If somebody brings a claim against us because of what you posted, what you did here, how you used somebody's information, or because you broke these terms or the law, you agree to cover our reasonable costs of dealing with it, including legal fees. We will tell you promptly, let you take over the defence of any claim that is purely yours, and not settle it in a way that admits something on your behalf without asking you.

19. Disagreements

Talk to us first. Almost everything is fixable by a phone call. Before starting any formal proceeding, please write to [email protected] setting out what happened and what you want, and give us thirty days to sort it out. We will do the same before bringing anything against you.

If that does not resolve it, disputes go to the state or federal courts sitting in Los Angeles County, California, and both of us consent to those courts. Either of us may take a qualifying claim to small claims court instead, and nothing here stops you doing so.

We do not require you to give up a jury trial, and we do not require you to arbitrate. Complaints to a government agency or a regulator are always open to you.

A disagreement with a vendor is between you and the vendor. Tell us anyway — we cannot settle it, but a pattern of complaints is exactly how a business gets removed from this site.

20. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. If any part of them is held unenforceable, that part is narrowed only so far as needed and the rest stands.

These terms, together with the privacy notice, are the whole agreement between us about the site. Not enforcing something once does not waive it. You may not transfer your rights under these terms; we may transfer ours if the business is sold, in which case we will say so here first.

21. Accessibility

This site is built to be usable with a keyboard alone, with a screen reader, at large text sizes and with reduced motion turned on, and we measure colour contrast against WCAG 2.2 AA rather than guessing at it.

If any part of it gets in your way, tell us at [email protected] or on 818 849 9179 and we will fix it and help you get what you came for in the meantime. This is not a formality — write to us and a person will answer.

22. Changes to these terms

We will change these terms when the site changes. When we do, the date at the top changes with them, and we will note what moved. For a change that materially affects your rights we will tell account holders by email at least thirty days before it takes effect, so that closing your account is a real option rather than a theoretical one. Carrying on using the site after a change takes effect means you accept it.

23. How to reach us

A real person reads all of these.

• Email — [email protected]
• Phone — 818 849 9179
• Or the form on our contact page

LA Party Lights, Los Angeles, California.