Vanity License Plate

When looking at vanity license plate options, customers have a lot to choose from. Vanity plates are any customized license plate, often displaying a driver's own personal message in their chosen combination of letters and numbers. Drivers may choose vanity plates for a variety of reasons, to express themselves, or to identify with a greater community, either within their home state or beyond.

Vanity plates and their prices vary by state: the state DMV offers different license plate styles as well as personalized and novelty license plates to drivers registering a vehicle. Drivers can also add vanity plates to their existing vehicles given that the plates are in stock at the DMV. Alternately, vanity plates can be ordered from the state.

Some vanity plates are simply a state license plate with a personalized "title" spelled out on the plate ID. Others are "themed" plates. These types of personalized license plates include all kinds of ideas that are presented by the DMV, including military themes like veteran memorial plates, nature awareness and endangered species plates, and even plates marking the driver as the alumnus of a state college or university.

Many of these state-offered plates come with some initial fees, as well as annual registration fees. For an example, see this page from Marshall University in West Virginia (http://www.marshall.edu/alumni/plate.asp).

The rates for other vanity plates differ from state to state. Drivers can get more information from this informal DMV site at DMV.ORG (http://search.dmv.org/dmv/virginia/vanity-plates) when attempting to figure out which types of vanity plates they would like to add to their vehicle.