This much I know: Peter Kelly AKA ‘Franc’
As a child I was outwardly friendly but also rather shy. My dad was Irish and my mother was from Scotland. He always wanted to return to Cork and we moved around a lot so I was always the new kid and had to ‘fit in’. I learnt to be a networker and a friend and an entertainer. My mum was a nurse and, later, a chef, and my dad worked in a fibre glass factory and then in the county council.
I thought I’d do engineering after school, but then decided to become a chef. I met my wife when we were both in college and we started working together, planning events.
The most difficult thing about wedding planning is managing other peoples’ expectations and emotions for the couple, because everybody has an opinion — so I focus on the couple and what they want.
One of my strong points is being able to think outside the box and to visualise how a space or property will look once it’s been designed and dressed. The hardest thing is communicating this vision to someone else.
We’ve had many, many occasions when things have gone wrong — three of our wedding cakes ended up in car crashes, we’ve had chefs get ill during service, we’ve had the power going down during the reception — but I never call these things disasters. Everything can be fixed.
When I’m not working I spend my time with my wife and our four children — and gardening.
My biggest affinity has always been with nature. It’s in the blood. My grandfather was head gardener in The Botanics in Edinburgh. He was even a presenter on BBC’s Gardener’s World and had his own radio show.
I’m passionate and down to earth. I’ve worked with millionaires and people without much money, but really, we are all the same and the one connecting factor for every event is emotion. So whether it’s a corporate function or a simple wedding, I still tap into this using the universal language of music, food and visuals to stir emotions.
My biggest challenge is dealing with negative people. During the recession what I hated most was Irish people talking ourselves down and making ourselves sound worse than we were.
Weddings kept a lot of hotels in Ireland surviving through the hard times. It’s a massive industry and I want to promote Ireland as a leading wedding destination — every bit as important as golf.
I fight routine and structure. I often stay up until 2.30am and am back up between 6 and 8am.
I don’t believe there is any secret to a successful relationship or marriage — it is all about communication and love and working at it. The honeymoon period wears off and I always wonder about people who divorce after a couple of years.... will they ever be happy? My idea of misery is sitting in a room without a window. That would kill me.
I’m a Catholic. I’m not sure about life after death. I don’t believe that I will ‘go’ somewhere, but I do sense people near me after they’ve passed on, I don’t know if that is just in my head or not.
One of my most difficult jobs was co-ordinating a large-scale event in Ashford over ten days. There had to be a scene change ever day — with a different carpet, wall colour and decor — so everything had to be layered. It was like building ten events in one and peeling off a layer to expose the next one.
Life has taught me that we are here for a good time, not a long time.
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