Eighteen months is comfortable. Twelve is workable. Nine months for four hundred guests in peak season means taking whatever venue is left, which is how families end up somewhere they did not choose.
Eighteen to twelve months out
Set the date. This is the muhurat conversation and it comes first, because everything else is fitted around it.
Fix the guest count within fifty either way. The difference between three hundred and five hundred changes which venues are even possible, so a rough number is not enough.
Visit Marrakech. Two or three days, four or five venues. Families who book without visiting almost always change their mind later, and by then the deposit is gone.
Twelve to nine months
Venue contracted, with the build access, the noise curfew and the fire permission written in rather than agreed verbally.
Hotel blocks held. This is earlier than people expect. Marrakech fills in spring and autumn, and three hundred rooms across several properties is not something you arrange in the same quarter as the wedding.
Save the dates out, with the visa note on them. Guests applying from India need lead time and some of them will leave it late regardless.
Nine to six months
Catering tasting, ideally in person. Menus signed for each event, with the Jain and pure vegetarian requirements specified as counts rather than as an afterthought.
Decor and mandap design locked, because anything shipped from India needs six to eight weeks plus customs.
Invitations out. Formal ones, with the full schedule, the dress notes for each event, and the practical travel information.
Six to three months
Artists, performers and dhol booked and flighted. Choreography started at home.
Transfers planned against actual flight numbers, which means collecting them at RSVP.
Rooming lists built. This takes longer than anyone plans for.
The last six weeks
Final numbers to catering, usually two weeks out with a small tolerance either side.
Seating plan built and then rebuilt, because roughly fifteen percent of a confirmed list moves in the last fortnight.
Run sheets issued to every supplier, and a site walk with the production crew.
The three dates everything else hangs off
Most of a timeline is soft. Three dates are not, and every other deadline on this page is really a consequence of one of them.
| The date | Set by | What happens if it moves |
|---|---|---|
| The muhurat | Your family and the pandit | Nothing else can be fixed until it exists, including the venue. Get a window even if you cannot get a date |
| The venue contract | Availability, eighteen months out for the best properties | Every supplier, every flight and every hotel block waits behind it |
| The hotel release date | The hotels, four to eight weeks out | Rooms go back and late guests pay double or stay elsewhere. This is why the save the date goes out at eight months |
What can slip, and what cannot
Decor, menus, the running order and the seating plan can all move late and frequently do. None of them depend on anybody else's calendar, and a decorator can absorb a change in month nine without difficulty.
What cannot slip is anything with a third party's deadline inside it: visas, the room block, the flights, the ceremony suppliers who are being flown in, and any permission that needs an authority rather than a person. Those are the ones to front load, and they are also the least interesting, which is exactly why they get left.
The useful test at every stage is simple. Ask whether this decision unlocks somebody else's work. If it does, it is late already.