I was sleeping when Divya called at 6:47 AM. Not texting. Calling. Which meant something was actually wrong. She was crying so hard I could barely understand what she was saying at first. I kept asking her to slow down and breathe because she was literally hyperventilating.
“I can’t do this,” she kept repeating. “I can’t. There’s too much. I woke up and realized my wedding is in four months and I have to make decisions about a thousand things and I don’t even know what a thousand things are. Like, do I book the venue first? Do I hire the photographer first? Do I talk to the caterer? Nobody tells you this stuff. Why does nobody tell you how complicated this is?”
I was sitting in my bed trying to wake up and process my sister having a complete panic attack at 6:47 in the morning. She’d gotten engaged two weeks before at a family dinner. Everyone had hugged her and congratulated her and taken pictures for Instagram. And then it hit her that she was supposed to plan an entire event with hundreds of people and spend more money than she makes in six months.
“Hey, come on, you’re spiraling,” I told her. “You need to hire someone.”
“Like what, a wedding planner?” She laughed but it was the stressed kind of laugh. “Those cost money. And they’re for rich people. That’s not us.”
But I watched what happened when she actually did hire someone. And it completely changed everything.
Raj’s Disaster
My friend Raj decided he was going to plan his own wedding. This made complete sense. He had a good job. His fiancée had a good job. They had a reasonable budget. They knew what they wanted. Why would they need to hire someone?
By month three, I barely recognized him. He’d call me after work just to talk about how stressed he was. He’d tell me about decisions that didn’t matter—like whether to have assigned seating or open seating—but he was losing sleep over it.
His fiancée started snapping at him about things that had nothing to do with the wedding. He’d snap back. They were both exhausted all the time. They’d made a decision about the color scheme and then he’d spend the entire next day convinced it was wrong.
“I didn’t know it would be like this,” he told me one evening. We were having coffee and he looked actually tired. Not just sleepy. Exhausted in a way that comes from constant stress. “I thought we’d spend a few weekends looking at venues and it would be done. But it’s every single day. You wake up thinking about it. You’re at work and you see something and immediately think about how it could work for the wedding. You eat dinner and spend the meal talking about centerpieces. It’s constant. It never stops.”
His mom finally got involved. She sat him down and basically said, “Why are you doing this to yourself? There are actual people who do this for a living. Let them do their job.”
Raj called a planner the next week.
When Divya Actually Did It
Divya met with a wedding planner named Sneha. She was terrified before the meeting. She thought Sneha would judge her ideas. She thought she’d try to get her to spend a ton of money. She thought she’d be condescending or make Divya feel stupid.
None of that happened.
Sneha literally just sat there and asked her questions for the first hour. What did she want? What was her budget? When was the wedding? What was important to her family? What stressed her out?
Divya just talked. She told Sneha everything. Her mom wanted a certain kind of event. Her fiancé’s mom wanted something different. Divya wanted it to feel like them, but she didn’t even know what that meant. The budget kept changing. Every time she talked to a vendor, she realized she didn’t know what she was doing.
When Divya was done, Sneha didn’t pull out a portfolio. She didn’t show mood boards. She didn’t try to sell her a fancy package. Sneha just said something that made my sister cry. Like actually tear up. She said, “You’re going to enjoy this. I’m going to handle the stuff that stresses you out. You just show up and be a bride.”
That was it. That was the whole conversation that changed everything for Divya.
What Actually Happened Next
Sneha took Divya to look at venues. But here’s the thing—she didn’t take her to look at a bunch of venues. She’d already researched like fifty venues on her own. She’d looked at which ones had afternoon light because that’s when Divya wanted to get married. She’d looked at which ones could fit the guest list. She’d looked at which ones matched the vibe Divya had described—like, she wanted something that felt different but also intimate even with a lot of people there.
So Divya only looked at four venues. She spent like a morning looking at four venues and one of them was the one she chose. That was it. Done.
Divya told me afterward, “If I’d done this myself, I would still be looking at venues. I would be driving around the city every weekend looking at fifty different places. I’d be confused about which one was best. I’d probably choose something and then regret it.”
Instead, Sneha had figured out which ones made sense and Divya just picked the one she liked best. That’s the whole thing right there.
The Actual Crisis
Two months before the wedding, Divya’s fiancé got called into a meeting at work. His company had a big project and they wanted to send him for a few months. Right before the wedding.
Divya called me. She was crying again but this time it was like, completely panicked. She thought the wedding would have to be cancelled. All the money they’d already paid vendors would be lost. Everything was falling apart. Her engagement was ruined.
I told her to call Sneha.
Sneha called her back within an hour. She told Divya to calm down. Sneha had already researched what the company’s typical project timelines were. She’d already thought through what would happen if they had to push back the wedding. She’d already looked at which vendors would be flexible, which deposits could be moved, what the actual impact would be.
The company ended up delaying the project. The wedding happened exactly when it was supposed to. But the planner had already prepared for it to go a different way. She’d already solved the problem in her head before it even became a real problem.
That’s what you get when you hire someone. You get someone who thinks through the worst case scenarios before they happen.
The Vendors
I didn’t really understand the vendor thing until I watched Divya’s wedding planning happen.
Sneha didn’t just recommend vendors because they were good. Sneha had worked with them before. She knew them. She’d worked with the florist on like fifteen weddings. She knew what the florist was capable of. She knew the florist was reliable. She knew the florist wouldn’t flake out or overcharge or try to do something crazy without asking first.
When Sneha recommended the florist to Divya, the florist already knew what to expect. The florist knew Sneha was someone she’d work with again and again. The florist knew the bride had already been talked to about what flowers cost. The florist knew this was a professional transaction.
So the florist cared more. She showed up more prepared. She communicated better.
The florist actually talked to me at the wedding. She was setting up the flowers and I was standing nearby. She said, “When Sneha sends me a bride, I know they’re already educated. They’re not going to ask me to do something stupid. They’re not going to be difficult. The communication is always clear. So I try harder.”
That’s the whole vendor network thing. It’s just trust. It’s relationships that are built over years.
The Money Thing
I was surprised by how Sneha handled money conversations with Divya. Like, there was zero pressure to spend more money. If Divya said her budget was X, then the budget was X. Sneha wasn’t trying to upsell her on anything.
But Sneha also made sure Divya understood where the money was actually going.
When the florist quote came back and it was higher than expected, Sneha didn’t just say yes or no. She sat down with Divya and showed her the numbers. She said, “You’re paying this much because you want these specific flowers and these flowers are expensive right now because it’s not their season. We can do three things. One, we get different flowers that look similar and cost less. Two, we keep these flowers but use fewer of them. Three, we keep everything exactly as planned. What do you want?”
Divya chose to keep the flowers. But she made that choice because she understood the cost, not because someone was pushing her or tricking her.
That’s not how most transactions work. Most people try to make as much money as possible. Sneha was just trying to match the cost to what actually mattered to the bride.
The Week Before
The week before the wedding, everything went wrong. Not catastrophically. Nothing was a disaster. But every single day, something happened that needed to be handled.
Two days before the wedding, the caterer called and said the specific plates Divya had chosen weren’t available anymore. Could they substitute with something similar?
The photographer woke up the day-of and called saying he had food poisoning and absolutely could not come.
The decorators needed a clarification on something last minute.
One of Divya’s aunts called confused about what time she was supposed to arrive.
Divya found out about maybe two of these things. Sneha handled literally everything else. She told the caterer yes, use the similar plates. She called the backup photographer who Sneha had researched months earlier and got her to come. She clarified the decoration thing in like five minutes. She called Divya’s aunt and fixed the confusion.
The photographer thing could have been a disaster. Most brides would panic. Like, that’s your entire wedding photography. That’s your memories. But Sneha had already done her research on backup photographers months before anything went wrong. Not just as an afterthought. As actual planning. She had two options ready. She called them and one could come. The backup photographer was excellent. Nobody even knew there’d been a problem.
The Day
On the actual wedding day, what I noticed was that Divya was present. Like, she was actually there. She wasn’t checking the time to see if things were running on schedule. She wasn’t stressed about whether the food had arrived. She wasn’t thinking about anything except her fiancé and her family and the fact that she was getting married.
Sneha was somewhere in the background handling things. I saw her reposition a light that wasn’t quite right. I watched her check with the caterers about timing. I saw her guide some confused relatives to the right area. But Divya had absolutely no idea any of this was happening. That was the whole point. The planner was managing all the logistics so Divya didn’t have to think about anything except being a bride.
What Divya Said After
A few weeks after the wedding, Divya and I were having tea at her place. We were looking through the wedding pictures and I asked her if it was worth hiring the planner.
She said, “I paid her 15% of the total wedding budget. When we first hired her, that felt like a lot of money. Like, we could have used that for the honeymoon. But you know what? She saved me more than that. Not in money. In my mind. In my sanity.”
What she meant was that she didn’t spend six months being anxious. She didn’t lose sleep. She didn’t get into fights with her fiancé over wedding stress. She actually got to enjoy being engaged. She actually got to show up on her wedding day feeling happy instead of exhausted.
Raj After
Raj had his wedding too. He hired a planner a couple months into his planning after he realized he was losing his mind. He told me after his wedding that the best part was realizing he didn’t have to make every single decision. Like, the planner would present three options and say “Here’s what I’d recommend” and he could just go with it. Instead of him researching everything and making an agonizing decision about every detail.
His fiancée said the best part was that her mom and his mom, who wanted different things, didn’t end up fighting about it. The planner just kind of handled both of them and made everyone happy.
The Real Conversations
My best friend Priya is getting married next year. She’s been looking at Best wedding planners in Goa because she wants to have her wedding in Goa and she doesn’t live there. She doesn’t know vendors in Goa. She doesn’t know which beaches are good. She doesn’t know the local logistics. So she’s specifically looking for someone who works in Goa and knows that market.
I asked her why she didn’t just hire someone from here and have them coordinate long distance. She said, “Because that person wouldn’t know Goa. They wouldn’t know which vendors are reliable. They wouldn’t know the weather patterns or the local issues. I need someone who actually knows Goa.”
My cousin is getting married in Thailand. She’s been looking at wedding planners in Goa just to get ideas about planning destination weddings, but she’s also looking specifically at Wedding Planners in Thailand because she’s going to have her wedding there. She doesn’t speak Thai. She doesn’t know anyone there. She doesn’t understand how the logistics work in that country. She said to me, “There’s no way I can plan this myself. I need someone who actually works there and knows how things work there.”
These aren’t people being fancy or wasting money. These are people being smart. These are people understanding that you need expertise for things you don’t know how to do.
What Wedding Planners Actually Are
Here’s what I learned about wedding planners over the past couple years watching my sister and my friends hire them.
They’re not decorators. They’re not just people who pick colors. They’re like the quarterback of the whole operation. They’re the person who understands what you actually want and then makes it happen through a bunch of other people you don’t know.
They’re the person who’s solved problems you haven’t even thought of yet. They’re the person who stays calm when things go wrong so you don’t have to panic. They’re the person who makes sure a million different things all come together at the exact right moment.
They’re not a luxury. They’re not for rich people or celebrities or people being fancy. They’re for anyone who understands that weddings are complicated and wants to actually enjoy their engagement instead of spending six months being miserable.
What’s Actually True
Divya got married a year and a half ago. When I look at the pictures from her wedding, she looks happy. Like, genuinely happy. Not worried. Not stressed. Not thinking about logistics. Just present and happy and there with her family.
That happened because she had someone in her corner making sure the stuff that stresses you out didn’t crush her.
If you’re getting married, hire someone. Find someone who listens more than they talk. Find someone who’s actually done this before. Find someone you feel like you can trust. Because your wedding is one day. But the months leading up to it are either going to be joyful or miserable. And that’s entirely up to whether you have the right person helping you make it all work.ShareArtifactsDownload allWedding planners in noidaDocument · MD