He is a serial entrepreneur or just exhaustingly innovative. Or as John Lennon puts it succinctly, “a dreamer.” Goan wedding planner, Lester Melo who founded Wedding N Dreams in 2001 has dabbled in more than eight businesses and it’s his quiet resolve that makes the difference! With plans to open a full fledged office in the Garden City, he plans to have a complete wedding studio in the city by end of 2016. And that’s not all, he has done a slew of weddings for Bengalureans, and most recently, a city couple even went back to celebrate their tenth anniversary with a bang, inviting their friendly planner along!
From the HR and ground logistics for Lakshmi Mittal’s niece’s wedding — the Mittal and Chaudhary wedding, Lester’s most cherished wedding was the Aditya Deshprabhu and Arti Malkanekar (Rauraje Deshprabhu Visconde de Pernem) wedding (the only royalty from Goa). Anita Hassanandani (TV actress) and Rohit Reddy, Vir Mehta (nephew of Ritu Kumar),Sunidhi Chauhan and Hitesh Sonik, Cookie Khanna (actor Vinod Khanna’s niece) and Sanjay Ghai, the list goes on and on. With destination weddings, Melo hopes to make cupids dreams come true in Mauritius, Kumarakom, Sri Lanka, Coorg and of course Goa.
He was infact, the youngest at 19 to open a night club in Goa. From starting Waterfalls for some splash and fun, to creating the first ground-breaking trips for his tour company – he was the first to take tourists to the Anjuna Flea Market by boat, curating a safari through the jungle to Dudhsagar Waterfalls, all ideas never tried, but given life by a teenager with august aspirations. All of them stretched mere thought, and created unique entities. The younger Lester even got a call from the then CM when his tours to Dudhsagar became a rage, requesting that he, ‘a corporate’ let the locals handle it. The Saipem resident was amused, given his short pant-totting gypsy-driving avatar! “I was no corporate, as a trial and error entrepreneur, I did what I believed in, it was the journey that mattered.
With weddings too, I was on a tour, and a couple came asking me to handle one, even today, they are in touch with me 15 years later! From one wedding, it became two and then 200!” Lester says, adding that many of the couples are now coming back for their tenth anniversaries! Innovating, out-of-the-box, he has had his altercations with failure, but starting young gave him a perspective. Handling weddings where money is not a criteria sculpted an astute and thinking businessman.
“The Dudhsagar waterfalls — people called me mad, and told my staff — your boss is off his head! Today, the government has monopolised it, but I was the one who saw that vision. Born in Africa, the safari idea had potential,” says the Nairobi-born entrepreneur who did his schooling in Muscat and came to Goa and decided to open shop, or many shops!
“I started with eight tourists a week in 1993, and there are 2,000 now. When the CM called, I had to explain that I am not a corporate, I started with a '60,000 loan my mother gave me for my first bus!” he smiles.
What separates Melo is when ideas float his way, he fearlessly rushes headlong, and failure they say teaches, and Lester is only wiser today. Today, Weddings N Dreams is among the top three in Goa, top 15 in India, in the top 100 in the world.
Very few people have the fortitude to persistently breathe life into the mind’s meanderings and Melo is adept. The Mittal-Chaudhary wedding, he recalls, “They had three functions in Goa — Park Hyatt, Leela and Taj Exotica, with a 24/7 help desk service, taxis, vehicles from Pune as Goa didn’t have enough top-end cars! A party on a boat, a staff of 400 accommodated and 600 guests. We’ve also done wedding with four elephants, a naval band, horses,” he says.
Sunidhi Chauhan and Hitesh Sonik’s was a private affair, “I am still in touch with them as with many other couples. When she came to our studio, I was giving tips on how they can cut costs. All the girls in my office were giggling when she left. When I asked why, they showed me their laptop, and I realised who she was! I didn’t know. I also didn’t know who Anita Hasnandani was. Anita even said that one of reasons she booked with us is that irrespective of not knowing her, we gave her wonderful service,” says the thinker who keeps embellishing his thinktank, be it a crash course in Scotland on wedding planning, learning Muralikrishnan’s memory mapping which helps use both sides of the brain, but during his lowest times, Robin Sharma’s and Robert Kiyosaki’s books have guided him.
Charity is also something close to his heart, but he prefers to do it quietly. If dreams are made of visions, he is pretty apt at making them a reality, with cupid in tow.
