Citations:confetti

non-paper confetti

 * 2006, Kerri Connor, Pocket Idiot's Guide to Potions, Penguin (ISBN 9781592575077), page 123:
 * You might also want to pick up some little bags of metal confetti from a party supply store. When added to your lotion, the tiny confetti will stick to you (for a while) when you apply the lotion.

"the confetti are"

 * 1857 February, Last Year's Carnival at Rome, in The Christian World: The Magazine of the American and Foreign Christian Union, volume VIII, page 36:
 * But the confetti are the chief missives in this warfare. These "comfits" are supposed to be sugar-plums, but are made of plaster-of-paris, and very powdery. Each carriage is furnished with a bushel or two, ...
 * 1897, Scientific American: Supplement, page 17957:
 * In the evening, the confetti are found in layers of from half an inch to an inch and a half in thickness at certain points, and the serpentines are seen involving the trees in their multicolored meshes. In the sun the effect is charming, ...
 * 1897, The Lancet, page 691:
 * If the confetti are clean, no great harm is perhaps done; but if they have been scraped up from the pavement after many persons have trodden upon them, then the practice is at once dirty and dangerous. This practice also led to quarrels.

italicized, but showing early date of use (inedible)

 * 1818, John Bramsen, Letters of a Prussian Traveller, page 202:
 * Not a carriage in Rome but is in requisition; [...] and when the maskers within catch a glimpse of an acquaintance, they salute him with a shower of confetti. [...] They were generally provided with a small basket of confetti, and as acquaintance and admirers pass in review, they must be prepared to recieve a volley of them [...] as white as a miller with the flour of these confetti.
 * 1828, Louis Simond, A tour in Italy and Sicily, page 282:
 * On the 21st of January [...] there were also great baskets full of confetti, made of bits of pozzolana dipped in lime-water to imitate sugar-plums, the use of which will soon by explained.

confections

 * 1953, Frances Toor, Festivals and Folkways of Italy:
 * When they leave the church, they throw almond confetti for the children, while friends and strangers throw flowers and corn at their feet and afterwards break the plates. After the feasting is all over and the bride and groom retire for the night, ...
 * 1959, Loren Wahl, Lorenzo Madalena, Confetti for Gino
 * "Why, if you and Teresa, our own best man and maid of honor . . . oh, how wonderful that would be, to eat confetti at your wedding!" Gino stood staring at the bride dumbly.
 * 1975, Garibaldi Marto Lapolla, The grand Gennaro, Ayer Co. Pub.:
 * Emilio and Roberto had pooled their resources in money and had arranged with the cafe keeper for steaming thick chocolate, a slow-pouring syrup-like drink, the richest boccotoni, cream-filled heavy sfogliate, and almond confetti.
 * 1986, Anne Paolucci, Sepia tones: seven short stories, Council on Natl Literature (ISBN 9780918680327):
 * There were large trays with assorted pastries and colored almond confetti for a wedding, and he remembered with a pang that this very day was the wedding anniversary, the day Pino and Maria had married (so long ago!) in Rome.
 * 2009, Sari Edelstein, Food, Cuisine, and Cultural Competency for Culinary, Hospitality, and Nutrition Professionals, Jones & Bartlett Learning (ISBN 9780763759650), page 200:
 * On September 29, small round potato dumplings called gnocchi are cooked and said to bring good luck (Abbot, 2007). Now they are used for weddings and other special occasions. Confetti colors are traditional and symbolic; [...] The confetti are always packaged in odd numbers, which can be traced back to religious beliefs, and are considered to bring good fortune.

italicized, but showing early date of use (confection)

 * 1870, Henry T. Tuckerman, in the Boston Transcript, quoted in The New York Observer Yearbook and Almanac, page 143:
 * [...] to regular and moderate habits, and is thereby rejuvenated; and of a pale and fair devotee of fashion who has left off eating confetti, and recovered her bloom.
 * 1875, The Literary World, page 342:
 * In person, she was short and fat, with bright black eyes, and firm white teeth, which she kept in constant practice by eating confetti of every imaginable kind, at all hours of the day.
 * 2019, Dorothy Louise Zinn, Raccomandazione: Clientelism and Connections in Italy, Berghahn Books (ISBN 9781789201987), page 75:
 * In the end, an American aunt of Southern Italian extraction prepared the Jordan almond confetti for my wedding, but we decided to forgo the trinket. Almost all of the American wedding guests left the confetti on the tables at the reception, ...