Three years ago, my partner looked at me over breakfast and said, “I want to get married in Thailand.” I nearly choked on my coffee. We’d been there once, for ten days, and we’d spent most of that time being too hot and complaining about the humidity. But there was something in their eyes—a certainty I hadn’t seen before. They meant it.
I laughed it off for about a week. Then I realized they weren’t going to let it go. So instead of talking them out of it, I started thinking about what that would actually mean. We’d have to figure out how to plan a wedding in a country where neither of us lived. We’d have to manage vendors we couldn’t visit in person. We’d have to deal with language barriers, cultural differences, and the simple fact that we had no idea what we were doing. I felt sick just thinking about it.
But here’s what I also thought: they were right. It was perfect. My family is spread across three continents. My partner’s family is in four different countries. Getting everyone to our hometown would cost a fortune, and half of them would be stressed about the logistics. In Thailand, we could all afford to come. We could extend it into a real trip instead of just a wedding day. And if we were going to spend money anyway, we might as well create an actual experience.
That’s when my cousin Sarah—who’d gotten married in Chiang Mai five years earlier—sent me a text: “You need to hire a wedding planner. Trust me on this. It’s the best money you’ll spend.”
The First Conversation That Changed Everything
I wasn’t convinced. I thought wedding planners were for people with unlimited budgets and bridezillas. We were practical, organized people. I had a project management background. How hard could it be?
Spoiler alert: really hard.
I tried. I created spreadsheets. I researched venues on Google Maps. I emailed hotels. I found florists on Instagram and tried to negotiate prices via DMs. I watched YouTube videos about Thai wedding traditions. I joined Facebook groups and asked questions that probably made me sound completely clueless (because I was completely clueless). After three weeks of this, I had a folder with a thousand browser tabs open, conflicting information from different sources, quotes I didn’t understand, and absolutely no clarity on anything.
My partner found me on the couch at 11 PM on a Thursday looking at hotels in Krabi and crying. Not dramatic, actually-distressed crying. They said, “Call your cousin. Today.”
Sarah gave me the number for a planner she’d worked with. Her name was Emma, and she’d been living in Phuket for twelve years. I almost didn’t call because I was sure it would be out of our budget. But Sarah had warned me that not hiring someone would be more expensive in the long run. So I did.
Emma answered the phone at what I later realized was 8 AM her time (I was calling at midnight my time, because time zones are ridiculous). She didn’t try to sell me anything. She just asked questions. What did I actually want? Not what did I think I was supposed to want, but what did I actually want? Did I want dancing? Did I want a ceremony that felt like a party or like a sacred moment? How many people did we want there? What was our real budget, not the inflated version I was pretending we had?
I found myself telling her things I hadn’t even told my partner yet. That I was terrified of getting married in front of so many people. That I wanted it to feel personal even with ninety guests. That I cared way more about the food being good than about having matching napkins. That I was worried people wouldn’t feel welcome in a foreign country.
Emma listened to all of this. Then she said, “Okay. I can work with this. And actually, you’re going to be fine. I promise you’re going to be fine.”
I hung up the phone and called my partner into the room. “I think we need to hire this person,” I said.
What Actually Happened When We Let Someone Else Take Over
The thing about hiring Emma was that it wasn’t just about booking a venue and calling some vendors. It was about having someone in our corner who actually knew Thailand and actually understood what we wanted.
Within a week of officially hiring her, Emma sent us a questionnaire that was way more thorough than anything I’d created. She wanted to know about our families, our traditions, our style, our concerns, the specific logistics of who was coming from where. Then she set up a video call and walked through everything with us, taking notes, asking follow-up questions, and actually mapping out a timeline.
She told us which season was best for our wedding date (we’d been thinking monsoon season, which apparently was a terrible idea). She explained the difference between various beaches and which ones would work best for our ceremony. She told us about a photographer she’d worked with for years whose style matched what we’d shown her in our inspiration photos. She asked if we wanted to incorporate any Thai traditions and explained what different ceremonies actually meant and what the etiquette was around participating in them as foreigners.
I remember being amazed that she didn’t try to push us toward what she normally did. She asked what we wanted and then figured out how to make it happen.
The Vendor Situation
Here’s where Emma really proved her worth. We wanted flowers that were bright and tropical but not tacky. I’d been showing every florist on the internet pictures from Pinterest that weren’t available in Thailand. Emma sat down with a florist she’d worked with for years—a woman named Dao—and they had an actual conversation about what would be in season during our wedding month and what would look amazing.
Dao brought us photos of flowers we’d never even heard of. Heliconia. Anthurium. Gingers in colors we didn’t know existed. We looked at them together over video call, and suddenly we could see the whole thing. The arrangements would be stunning because they’d be working with what was actually available and beautiful, not forcing sad versions of what we’d originally imagined.
Emma did this with every single vendor. The caterer. The photographer. The decorator. The musician. The resort coordinator. She had actual relationships with these people. They weren’t just vendor names in her database. She’d worked with them before. She knew their style and their reliability and the way they approached their work.
When we met with the caterer, he’d already been briefed by Emma on our dietary needs (my partner is vegetarian, one of my brothers is pescatarian, several guests had allergies). He came prepared with menu options that already accounted for all of that instead of us having to explain everything from scratch. He also asked what our actual cuisine preferences were and suggested things that combined Thai flavors with what he knew we’d enjoy eating. It felt personal instead of like we were just ordering from a standard wedding menu.
The Money Reality
Let me be completely honest about what we paid. Emma charged a percentage of our total wedding budget. It wasn’t a small number. I was uncomfortable with it at first because it felt expensive to pay for someone to coordinate things.
Then I actually did the math.
The photography package Emma recommended—a specific photographer she’d worked with multiple times—was actually less expensive than the random photographer I’d found who was cheaper but had never done a destination wedding before and didn’t know how to navigate Thai venues or handle the specific lighting challenges of the locations we’d chosen. So right there, hiring Emma saved us money on that alone.
The caterer she recommended was mid-range on price, but he was providing a custom menu with more options than most of the quotes I’d gotten for basic wedding packages. That felt like better value.
The florist. The decorator. The musician. All of them were people Emma had chosen specifically for us, and we trusted her judgment because we’d seen what she’d done. We weren’t paying for the most expensive option in each category. We were paying for the right fit for our actual wedding.
And then there’s the time I didn’t spend. I didn’t spend seventy hours researching and emailing and managing back-and-forth communication with vendors. My partner didn’t spend twenty hours worrying about things that could go wrong. My mom didn’t try to coordinate things from home and get frustrated by miscommunication. Emma handled it. So the money we paid her? It was worth it just for the peace of mind and the reclaimed time alone.
The Conversations I Didn’t Have to Have
One thing that really hit me was how much Emma protected us from awkward situations. There was a resort that we really loved, but when Emma dug deeper, she found out they’d had some issues with wedding vendors and there were often miscommunications. She gently suggested another resort that was equally beautiful and had a much more established wedding program. We never would have found out about the first resort’s issues on our own.
There was a flower vendor my partner loved from Instagram who, when Emma contacted them, turned out to not actually do wedding arrangements—they were a retail shop that Instagram made look fancier than they actually were. Emma found this out so we didn’t waste time or money pursuing it.
There was a photographer who seemed great online but who Emma knew from colleagues had become unreliable. She never told us this directly. She just presented us with better options and explained why she thought they were better. Later, we found out about the photographer’s reputation through a wedding Facebook group, and we were so grateful Emma had steered us away.
The Cultural Stuff That We Had No Idea About
My partner wanted to have a traditional Thai blessing ceremony. We’d seen it at a wedding and it looked beautiful and meaningful. But we had no idea if it was appropriate for foreigners to do, how to arrange it, or what it actually meant.
Emma explained everything. The ceremony blesses the couple’s union and is typically led by monks or elders. It involves pouring water over the couple’s joined hands. It’s a sacred moment, not a spectacle. She asked if we were genuinely interested in incorporating this or if we just thought it looked cool, because those are different conversations.
We were genuinely interested. So Emma contacted a temple she had a relationship with, explained our situation, and asked if they would be willing to participate. The monks agreed. Emma then told us exactly what to expect, how to dress, how to behave, what to do with our hands, everything. She arranged a time for us to visit the temple before the wedding to meet with the monks and understand the practice better.
Without Emma, we either would have skipped it or done it wrong and possibly committed some cultural offense without even realizing it.
Two Weeks Before
Two weeks out, I was in a weird mental state. Half excited, half convinced something was going to fall apart. I sent Emma a rambling text message at like 2 AM my time about all my fears. She called me at a reasonable hour on her end and we talked for an hour.
She walked me through the timeline. She told me which decisions were locked in and which things could still be adjusted if we wanted them to be. She told me stories about other couples she’d worked with who’d had the same fears I was having. She reminded me that we’d made deliberate choices about everything and that those choices were good.
She also told me that even if something went wrong—and something probably would, because something always does at weddings—it would be manageable and fixable. And if we needed her on the day of to troubleshoot, she’d be there. She was going to be present at the wedding. Not hovering or taking over, but available.
That phone call meant everything. I finally felt like I could actually enjoy the anticipation instead of just being anxious.
The Actual Wedding Day
We got married on a Thursday evening in November in Krabi. We had a ceremony on a beach with about ninety people there. The sunset was insane. Like, better than any sunset I’d ever seen anywhere. The photographer caught moments I didn’t even know were happening because he understood the flow of a Thai ceremony and knew where to position himself.
After the ceremony, we walked across the beach to a pavilion for the reception. We had tables with views of the Andaman Sea. We had a menu that blended Thai flavors with dishes we loved. We had decorations that were beautiful and felt like us instead of like we’d rented generic wedding décor. We had a musician playing the songs we’d requested.
My family members told me later that they’d felt welcome the entire time, even though it was a foreign country, because Emma had arranged everything so thoughtfully. She’d put welcome packets in their rooms. She’d arranged transportation from the airport. She’d made sure the resort staff understood how to accommodate everyone. She’d thought through a thousand small details that added up to us all feeling taken care of.
There were small things that didn’t go exactly as planned. My heel got stuck in the sand and I almost fell during a dance (nobody saw). One of my uncles got sunburned (he’d been told to wear sunscreen and didn’t listen). The band started their first song about five minutes late. My grandmother cried so hard during the vows that her mascara ran (happy tears, but still). The champagne ran out a little earlier than we’d planned, so we switched to wine for the second toast.
None of these things mattered because they’re the kinds of tiny imperfections that happen at every wedding. What mattered was that nothing big fell apart. There was no miscommunication with vendors. There were no forgotten arrangements. There were no last-minute scrambles. There were no unexpected costs that blew up the budget. There were no guests who felt uncomfortable or confused.
Emma had made sure of it. Not by being controlling or rigid, but by having thought through everything so carefully and built in enough flexibility that small adjustments could happen without any stress.
What I Would Tell Anyone Planning a Destination Wedding
If you’re thinking about getting married somewhere you don’t live, you need to hire someone who actually lives there and knows what they’re doing. I know it feels expensive. I get it. But not hiring someone is actually more expensive because you’ll overpay for vendors you don’t know, you’ll make mistakes that require corrections, and you’ll spend so much time managing logistics that you’ll miss out on actually enjoying the process.
When you’re looking for a Wedding Planners in Thailand, ask people you trust for recommendations. Call them and have a real conversation. Ask them about their vendor relationships and their experience working with international couples. Ask them if they actually listen to what you want or if they try to fit you into a template. Ask for references from actual couples. Trust your gut about whether this person is going to have your back.
The Top Wedding Planners in Thailand are the ones who understand that this is your wedding, not their portfolio. They’re the ones who ask good questions and listen to the answers. They’re the ones with real relationships with quality vendors. They’re the ones who think through contingencies and communicate clearly.
And here’s the thing about hiring someone good: you don’t stop being involved in your wedding. You’re still making decisions. You’re still choosing venues and flowers and menus. But you’re doing it with someone who actually knows the landscape and can help you make better choices. You’re doing it without the stress of managing everything yourself from another country.
I cannot imagine how our wedding would have gone without Emma. I genuinely think we would have either spent ten times the money and still had things fall through, or we would have scaled back so much that we wouldn’t have gotten the celebration we actually wanted. Instead, we got the wedding we dreamed about. We got to be there and actually be present instead of running around in crisis mode. Our guests felt welcome. Everything that mattered worked perfectly.
So if you’re daydreaming about getting married in Thailand, stop thinking about it and actually look into Best Wedding Planners in Thailand. Find someone who knows what they’re doing, trust them to help you figure it out, and then spend your wedding day getting married instead of managing logistics. You’ll spend the money and you’ll be so grateful you did.