It’s 3:47 AM and I’m just gonna be honest with you – I’m sitting here with cold coffee, my laptop is overheating, and I have seventeen tabs open with vendor quotes I don’t understand. My fiancé is asleep on the couch next to me because apparently I’ve been muttering about napkin colors out loud for the last hour. This is the moment I realized I had absolutely no idea what I was doing when it comes to finding the best wedding planners in Goa. I didn’t understand why best wedding planners in Goa kept telling me different things, or how to even identify who were actually the best wedding planners in Goa worth hiring.
We wanted a beach wedding in Goa. Simple, right? Wrong. So incredibly wrong.
The Part Where I Thought I Could Just Wing It
Look, I’m pretty organized. I run a decent-sized project at work. I figured a wedding is just project management, and I’m good at project management. I bought those wedding planning books. I made spreadsheets – like five different spreadsheets. I subscribed to like twelve wedding planning websites. I was READY.
Except I wasn’t ready at all.
First problem: I didn’t know who to call in Goa. Like, how do you find a photographer there? You Google it and get a million results that all look the same. Then you start emailing people and maybe three out of ten actually respond. The ones who do respond want to WhatsApp you instead of email, which is fine except now I’m trying to manage a wedding over WhatsApp with people in a different time zone who sometimes disappear for two days.
I found a caterer because her Instagram food looked insane. I was like “YES, this is who I want.” Except when I asked her to send me quotes, she wanted to know specifics I didn’t even know were a thing. How many people in each dietary category? Did I want the menu served this way or that way? What about the bar setup? I was just like… I don’t know, make it pretty and tasty?
Then there’s the florist situation. Flowers in Goa are different from flowers at home. I kept sending pictures of bouquets from Pinterest and the florist kept telling me half that stuff doesn’t grow in Goa. Which I guess makes sense but also I didn’t think about that. At all.
By week two I had five different people telling me five different things about the same decisions. The venue said the tent didn’t fit where I wanted it. The caterer said they needed a certain setup. The florist wanted access to the space the day before. The photographer wanted to scout the location first. Everyone had a requirement and none of them matched up with each other.
I made a master timeline. Then I realized I’d scheduled the florist to be there at the same time the photographer was doing setup shots. Then I changed the timeline and suddenly the caterer couldn’t arrive when they needed to. It was like playing 3D chess where I didn’t know the rules.
The Real Turning Point (Aka My Mom Saved My Life)
My mom called me like a week into this disaster. She’s not even on social media – she genuinely doesn’t know what Pinterest is – but somehow she could tell from my voice that I was losing it. She literally said “You sound like a crazy person. Let me call someone.”
She called her friend Neha who had gotten married in Goa like five years ago and asked if she knew anyone. Neha gave her the number of her wedding planner. My mom basically forced me to call her that day.
I was resistant. I was like “No, no, I got this. I don’t need help.” But my mom was having none of it and honestly I was desperate enough to just do what she said.
The planner’s name is Kavita and she answered the phone like she genuinely had time to talk to me even though it was a random Thursday afternoon. She asked me like three questions. Just three. What date did I want? How many people? What was my rough budget? She didn’t try to upsell me. She didn’t push me into this big package or that one. She just said “Okay, this is doable, come to Goa next month and we’ll walk through venues together.”
The walk through venues with her was like someone turning on a light switch in a dark room. She was like “This place is great but the kitchen is too far from the serving area so food gets cold. This place is beautiful but the WiFi is terrible so your photographer can’t back up images. This place is my favorite because of these specific reasons.”
She wasn’t just showing me pretty places. She was thinking about the actual logistics of how the wedding would function. Things I literally had never considered.
She was also honest about timing. She told me I’d chosen a date that was technically possible but “not ideal because it’s shoulder season and we might have rain.” She explained what that actually meant – like specific percentages, what to expect, how to handle it. Not in a scary way. Just factual.
What Actually Changed When I Stopped Being Stubborn
Once Kavita was involved, things shifted immediately. Like, literally within 48 hours things shifted.
She met with the caterer in person – like they sat down with coffee and actually talked. Then Kavita called me and explained exactly how the caterer operated, what her real pricing looked like, what she could and couldn’t do. Turned out the caterer’s Instagram was gorgeous but she was actually pretty rigid about menu customization and her pricing was at the higher end. Kavita found us someone else who was equally talented but more flexible and better priced.
The florist situation got handled because Kavita literally took pictures of what was available and what grew in Goa at our specific wedding date. She showed me realistic options instead of me sending random Pinterest pictures. We ended up with flowers that actually grew locally, looked stunning, and were way cheaper than shipping stuff in from somewhere else.
The venue timeline? Kavita just reorganized everything in a way that made sense. She knew that the florist needed two hours minimum the morning of, the caterer’s prep area needed to be separate from the guest area, the photographer needed to start shooting an hour before anything else happened. She just knew all this stuff. She built a timeline that didn’t make people run into each other.
But here’s the weirdest part – she handled communication. She wasn’t doing the work herself but she was the communication hub. So instead of me emailing the florist and the photographer and the caterer and the venue and all these people separately, Kavita was coordinating everyone. They all knew what everyone else was doing. There was no confusion. There were no conflicting plans.
I remember at one point I wanted to change something last minute – I think it was the cocktail hour location or something – and instead of creating chaos, Kavita just figured out how to make it work. She checked with the caterer. She checked with the venue. She reorganized some logistics. By the next day it was sorted.
The Stuff I Actually Didn’t Know I Didn’t Know
Like, apparently getting legally married in another country is way more complicated than I thought. There’s paperwork. There’s documentation. My husband is from the UK and getting him all the right papers so we could legally get married in India was like a whole thing that I had absolutely no clue about.
Kavita handled it. She knew exactly what documents we needed, what had to be notarized, what had to be certified, which government office it had to go through. She literally walked me through it step by step. If she hadn’t, I probably would’ve shown up for my wedding and then realized I couldn’t actually get legally married because I hadn’t done some form correctly.
Also, there’s the monsoon thing. Like obviously I knew Goa gets monsoons but I didn’t understand what that actually meant for a wedding. Kavita explained it to me – she showed me weather data, historical patterns, what to expect in our specific month. She didn’t scare me about it. She just explained the reality and showed me what the backup plans were.
There was also this whole thing about local permits and permissions that I didn’t even know existed. Like the venue needed certain approvals. There were noise restrictions in certain areas. There were rules about serving alcohol. I would’ve just assumed you could do whatever at the venue and found out the hard way that there were all these other hoops to jump through.
Kavita’s been doing this for so long that she just knows. She knew to get all the permits before we finalized anything. She knew which vendors understood local rules and which ones didn’t. She basically handled all this admin stuff that I didn’t even know was a thing.
Two Weeks Before Everything Went Weird
About two weeks out from the wedding, it looked like it was going to absolutely pour. Like, monsoon-level rain. My dad called me absolutely panicked. My MIL was texting my husband asking if we should postpone. Everyone was freaking out.
I called Kavita. This was now late evening for her – she was probably trying to eat dinner or something – and she picked up like immediately and was like “Yeah, the forecast is showing rain. We’ve got options.”
She had already arranged with the venue to have tent covering available. She’d already talked to the photographer about shooting in different locations if needed. She’d already coordinated with the caterer about how serving would work if we needed to move things indoors. She had contingency plans because she’s been through this before and she knows that weather happens.
The day before my wedding the rain started. I won’t lie, I was nervous. But Kavita kept me updated throughout the day – “Okay, rain’s happening now but the forecast shows it clearing by 5 AM. We’re good.” When I woke up on my wedding day, it was sunny. Like, perfectly sunny.
If I’d been handling that alone I would have been a complete wreck for the whole two weeks leading up to it. Instead, I got to be excited and nervous in the normal wedding way, not terrified that everything was going to get rained out.
Actually Getting Married (The Part That Matters)
My wedding day I woke up and just… got ready. Like, I did my hair and makeup and drank some tea and sat with my mom and my bridesmaids and we actually just chilled. Nobody was stress-texting me about vendors or timelines or problems.
That’s because Kavita showed up at like 5:30 AM. I didn’t have to be there. I didn’t have to coordinate anything. She was checking the setup, coordinating the florist, making sure the photographer knew where to be, checking in with the caterer. She was handling everything so that by the time my dad came to get me for the ceremony, everything was already set and ready and I literally just had to walk out and get married.
There was this moment – I think it was like 20 minutes before the ceremony – where the ceremony arch the florist designed was slightly lopsided. It was the tiniest thing. Like 99% of people wouldn’t have noticed. But Kavita noticed and she quietly fixed it while I was getting ready. I didn’t even know it happened. By the time I saw it, it was perfect.
That’s the kind of stuff you don’t think about but it’s everything. Your wedding day should be about you getting married, not you managing logistics. And for that to happen, someone else has to be managing the logistics. Someone who knows what they’re doing.
What I Learned About Picking The Right Person
When I finally actually got serious about finding a planner, I didn’t just book the first person I found. I called three different planners. I asked them the same questions so I could actually compare their approaches.
I asked each one: “What would you do if a vendor cancelled last minute?” One of them got defensive about it – like I was implying her vendors would cancel. That was a red flag right there. One of them gave me a generic answer that didn’t really mean anything. Kavita just said “I’ve got a backup list for everything. It hasn’t happened yet but if it does, we handle it.”
I asked: “Can you work with a budget or are you only interested in big money weddings?” One planner was pretty condescending about it. Another one kept trying to get me to spend more. Kavita just asked “What’s your ballpark?” and then worked within it. She showed me how to prioritize – like where spending more actually made a difference versus where you could save without it looking cheap.
I asked: “How often do we actually talk?” I needed to know I wouldn’t be left in the dark for months. Kavita said she’d do monthly check-ins leading up and then weekly check-ins in the final month. That seemed reasonable.
I also asked her to introduce me to other couples she’d worked with. She gave me the numbers of two different couples and I actually called them. Both of them answered my questions honestly. One of them told me about a situation where the original venue cancelled and how Kavita found them a replacement at literally the last second. That made me feel so much better about hiring her.
Honest Questions I Actually Had (And Real Answers)
When do I actually need to book everything?
We booked Kavita about 15 months out and honestly it felt like we were cutting it close. December and January in Goa get absolutely booked up for weddings. Like, the good venues are literally full. If you want any choice at all, give yourself 12-18 months. If you’re flexible about dates and don’t care if it’s January or November or December, you could probably do it faster. But if you have specific ideas about the date, don’t wait.
Is it really true that the weather in November-February is the only option?
Yeah, it kind of is if you want your wedding to not be a total disaster. May through September is literally monsoon season. July was absolutely not happening – we looked at dates and it looked terrible. May and June get increasingly hot and humid. March and April are okay but super hot. November through February is genuinely the sweet spot. The weather’s beautiful, it’s warm but not oppressive, people can actually enjoy being outside.
Is the planner going to just do what I want or will she push her own ideas?
This is actually important and Kavita was great about it. She’d make suggestions based on what actually works logistically – like “I wouldn’t do that because of X, Y, Z reason” – but if I really wanted something, she’d make it happen. She pushed back once on a layout idea because she said it would cause problems with flow and she was right. But when I wanted something that was different from what she might have chosen, she just worked with me.
What happens to the legal marriage stuff?
This is such an important thing that people don’t think about. Kavita literally explained every single thing we needed. She connected us with the office that handles marriage registration. She made sure all our documents were right. My husband being from the UK made it more complicated but she handled all of it. I definitely could not have figured this out on my own.
How much did the whole planner thing actually cost?
Kavita’s fee was reasonable – like way less than I was spending on individual things anyway. And honestly, because she knew how to negotiate with vendors and where to spend money efficiently, I think she actually saved us money overall. Like, if I’d hired every vendor independently and overpaid for things I didn’t really need, I would’ve spent way more.
Real Talk About Why You Actually Need This
I get it. You think you can DIY it. I thought that too. And I was wrong in like every possible way. The thing nobody tells you is that planning a wedding – even just a regular wedding – is genuinely a lot of work. Planning a wedding in another country where you don’t know anyone and don’t know how things work is like ten times harder.
You can either spend the next year and a half stressed and overwhelmed, making mistakes, overpaying for things, probably getting mad at your fiancé a few times because you’re frustrated about logistics, or you can hire someone who actually knows what they’re doing and just get married and enjoy it.
I’m not saying this because I’m trying to sell you anything. I’m saying it because I tried to do it myself and I was absolutely losing my mind until I didn’t. The difference was Kavita. One person who knew how things actually worked in Goa, who had relationships with good vendors, who understood the logistics, who could handle the chaos so I didn’t have to.
If you’re thinking about getting married in Goa, seriously talk to someone about wedding planners in Goa before you start this journey yourself. Check out https://dcweddingandevents.com/destination-wedding-planners/wedding-planners-in-goa/ and see what people are actually saying about working with professional wedding planners in Goa. Talk to them. Ask them real questions. Get recommendations. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can handle this alone like I almost did.
Literally Just Talk To An Actual Planner
The worst thing that happens is you talk to someone and realize you do want to handle it yourself. The best thing that happens is you find someone like Kavita who makes the whole thing actually doable and enjoyable instead of soul-crushing.
Seriously, just make the call. Your future self – the one who gets to actually enjoy her wedding day instead of managing vendor crises – will be so grateful.
Your wedding in Goa should be amazing. And it will be, but not if you’re the one coordinating everything. Get help. Get someone who knows wedding planners in Goa and has done this a million times. You deserve to just be excited and get married, not to be stressed about logistics the whole time. That’s why wedding planners in Goa exist. Use them.