Planning an Indian wedding from New Jersey when half your family is still in Ahmedabad is not the same job as planning a wedding. There is a Sangeet, a Haldi, a Mehndi, a ceremony and a reception, and every one of them carries a different guest list. Your cousin in Delhi cannot fly in, but she will absolutely notice if she was not invited properly.
Edison, Long Island, Manhattan and Central Jersey together form the densest South Asian wedding market in America. Here are five of the planners working in it, and what each one actually does.
Tum Hi Ho Events
Tum Hi Ho is based at 1857 Oak Tree Road in Edison, New Jersey, which will mean something to anyone familiar with the area. Oak Tree Road is the spine of South Asian New Jersey, and nobody ends up with that address by accident. Founded in 2015, it is led by Hiren Patel, who serves as CEO and lead planner while also handling vendor relations.
The team is unusually large for this industry, running to roughly thirty people, including six lead coordinators and two dozen wedding coordinators. Their reach is equally wide. They cover Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Connecticut, New England, Florida, South Carolina, California, Texas and Mexico for destination work.
They describe themselves as precise, prompt and professional, and they plan every detail down to the minute. Services run from full planning through to vendor selection guidance and day of coordination. They have won WeddingWire Couples Choice Awards in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2023, and they are listed across The Knot, PartySlate, Zola and South Asian Bride Magazine.
The most revealing thing about Hiren Patel is how he describes the work. He talks about South Asian weddings as customs and rituals masked as games, with two families going head to head, from stealing the groom's shoes to the rivalry during the pheras. His point is that there is never a clear winner, because by the end of the night both sides have united and two families have become one.
Sonal J. Shah Event Consultants
Sonal J. Shah is the closest thing this industry has to a household name, with a career spanning more than twenty years. The firm works out of New York and Miami, and takes on weddings worldwide.
She has been named Best Wedding Planner by Brides, and is widely described as a premiere celebrity expert on South Asian and cross cultural weddings. She speaks internationally, and she has written the book on the subject, quite literally, in The Complete Guide to Planning the Perfect South Asian Wedding.
Recent celebrations include a blush toned reception at Cipriani Wall Street, alongside weddings at The Plaza and The Pierre. Their definition of detail goes further than most, curating everything from the lighting to the napkin treatments, from custom dance floors through to the scent of the room itself. The venues are just as varied, ranging from a ballroom to a museum to a backyard to a private island.
The approach is white glove throughout, and the bespoke experience begins the moment they are hired.
Chandai Events
Chandai Events is based in New York and led by Chandai Raghunauth, who works largely out of Long Island. She was born and raised in Brooklyn, and brings more than thirty five years of combined experience across hotels, restaurants and wedding planning, along with a degree in Hospitality Management. That background shapes the work, and she approaches guests the way a hotelier does rather than the way a decorator does.
What genuinely separates the company is its range. She specialises in West Indian weddings, South Asian Indian weddings, American weddings, LGBTQ weddings and destination weddings, and describes herself as an expert in fusion events.
The West Indian specialty carries more weight than it first appears. There is an entire Indo Caribbean community across Queens, Brooklyn and Long Island, made up of families whose ancestors travelled from India to Guyana or Trinidad generations ago, and then onward to New York. Their relatives are spread across three continents rather than two, and very few South Asian planners serve them.
Her portfolio also includes a Malayalam wedding in New Jersey, which places her genuinely across the whole of India. Her services stretch from venue scouting and budgeting through to DJs, cake designers, caterers and even nanny care. The company offers full planning, partial planning and month of coordination, and also produces wedding films. She has been featured by South Asian Bride Magazine and Maharani Weddings.
Wedding Elegance NYC
Wedding Elegance NYC is based in Manhattan and led by Chetali Shah, who serves as CEO and lead planner. She is a Certified Wedding Planner through The Bridal Society, and the company brings over fifteen years of experience.
The promise they lead with is unusual, and genuinely brave. They work on one wedding at a time. When a couple books them, the team and its resources are entirely at that couple's disposal for the duration of the event, and they will not send someone less qualified in their place. In an industry where planners routinely handle three Saturdays a month, that is a real constraint on their own revenue.
Their range runs from an intimate gathering of fifty guests to an extravagant affair of fifteen hundred, in a backyard or on top of the World Trade Center. The company works across New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, and takes on destination weddings worldwide. Services include full planning, partial planning and day of coordination, and they welcome same sex couples and work with all religious and cultural backgrounds.
On vendors, the approach is selective. They only recommend vendors who have passed their vetting process and who offer real value for the budget.
KM Events Management
KM Events Management was founded in 2010 and is run by a married couple who have been together since 2002. They specialise in cultural weddings and receptions, and are known within the South Asian community.
The company exists because of the founders' own wedding. They had wonderful pre events and exceptional vendors, and plenty of professionals were helping. But nothing came close to having the help they actually needed, without feeling guilty about making friends and family run around for them.
Every NRI family will recognise that immediately. It is the unpaid labour of the aunties, the cousin who quietly becomes an unofficial coordinator, the uncle assigned to every airport pickup.
That guilt is the whole reason the company was started. The founders realised they could have used experienced professionals who understood the specifics, who could build detailed schedules and run everything to expectation. The offer is stated simply. They will be a couple's eyes, ears, hands and feet, so that the families and their guests can enjoy every moment of the day, with the client's vision, culture and traditions fully incorporated.
There are more than five
This list covers the tri state hub, and it is not the whole map. The Indivites vendor list runs considerably wider, with planners in other cities and other categories entirely, including photographers, decorators, caterers, mehndi artists and DJs. Different regions have different strengths, and the strongest planner in Houston or Toronto is not the same person as the strongest planner in Edison.
Where the planner's job ends
Your planner runs the day itself. Venue, timeline, vendors, decor, and the genuinely tense twenty minutes before the Baraat begins.
What your planner does not run is your guest list, at least not across nine time zones, five separate events and a WhatsApp group with two hundred people in it. That layer is what Indivites was built for.
Frequently asked questions
How much does an Indian wedding planner cost in NY and NJ? None of these five publish their pricing, which is standard practice, because Indian weddings vary enormously in scale. Full planning will take a meaningful percentage of your overall budget, while partial planning and day of coordination cost considerably less. Every planner here works in tiers.
When should I book a planner? For a multi event wedding in peak season, twelve to eighteen months ahead is realistic. The strongest planners in this corridor fill up quickly, and a company like Wedding Elegance, which takes only one wedding at a time, has genuinely limited availability.
Do these planners work outside New York and New Jersey? Yes, and several work well beyond it. Tum Hi Ho covers thirteen markets, including Texas, California, Florida and Mexico. SJS Events works across New York, Miami and worldwide. Chandai Events travels to any location, and Wedding Elegance NYC covers seven states along with destination weddings.
Which of these planners handle non Hindu ceremonies? Most of them do. Wedding Elegance NYC works with all religious and cultural backgrounds, and Chandai Events covers West Indian, South Asian, American, LGBTQ and fusion weddings. KM Events specialises in cultural weddings broadly.
Do planners handle the guest list and RSVPs? Some will coordinate them, but very few will build the system that runs them. Planners are logistics and design people rather than software people, and when guests are split between New Jersey and Nagpur you need something that genuinely works. Most couples now run invitations, the wedding website and RSVP tracking through Indivites, then hand their planner a clean headcount.