Planning a trip with friends nearly ruined our friendship

We almost ruined our trip because of this, we were 4 friends trying to organize a trip together.

At the beginning it sounded easy, but after a few days it became chaos:

- endless messages

- no one agreeing on dates

- budget completely unclear

- people dropping in and out

At some point we were honestly close to just giving up.

In the end we somehow managed to get organized and book everything in a couple of hours, but getting there was way more stressful than expected.

Now I’m wondering is this just us or is group travel always like this?

How do you guys usually handle it?