Are divorce parties ‘empowering’ — or depressingly crass?
These are Charlie’s friends toasting the end of her marriage with cocktails in a hot tub — part of a thoroughly modern trend ...
OVER the course of their 13-year marriage, Cara and Paul Sayer have enjoyed many celebrations together. From their lavish wedding in 2003 — a ceremony at Douai Abbey in Berkshire followed by a marquee reception for 200 guests — to bashes for landmark birthdays and anniversaries, not forgetting parties for their daughter Holly, nine.
But their next party — a garden reception later this Spring for family and friends with lashings of Pimm’s and a large cake — will have a more bitter-sweet theme.
For this will be the couple’s divorce party, Cara and Paul having received their decree absolute last October.
‘It will be a celebration of what Paul and I shared and recognition that even though we are divorced we are still raising a family together,’ says Cara, 45, a businesswoman from Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, who plans to throw the bash at her post-marital home.
A few years ago it would have been impossible to imagine anyone celebrating the end of their marriage, let alone with their ex. But divorce parties have become big business although, as will become clear, most certainly don’t feature the former Mr and Mrs partying together.
Many will find the concept of a divorce party distasteful, no matter how amicable the split. Like it or not, however, they are here to stay, aided by an ever-growing array of divorce-related merchandise — from ‘Congratulations On your Divorce’ cards to divorce sashes, divorce-themed jewellery and even underwear embroidered with the slogan ‘Just Divorced’.
With 40 per cent of marriages now ending in failure, this is certainly a lucrative market to tap into. But is it really the right way to move on after divorce? Is a divorce party really a symbol of empowerment as its supporters claim? Or merely a tacky way to trivialise an institution which is increasingly seen as expendable? ‘I am celebrating what Paul and I have achieved together rather than the fact we’re getting divorced,’ Cara insists.
The couple, who met at a party in 1999, married in June 2003 when Cara was 31. ‘It was the best day of my life,’ she says.
But the marriage began to unravel when Holly was three and Cara set up her own business, Snooze Shade, selling black-out blinds for babies.
‘Like most business owners I was obsessed and the long hours I spent at work, along with the energy needed to bring up Holly, affected the amount of time we spent together,’ says Cara. ‘It is a cliche, but we grew apart and the chemistry disappeared.’
While the couple tried marriage counselling, it failed to heal the growing gulf between them and in May 2014, after a second series of counselling sessions, they realised the marriage was over. ‘I never expected to divorce, but if we’d stayed married we would have ended up hostile towards each other,’ Cara says.
Paul, 50, a company director, moved out in October 2015, but even after their decree absolute came through last autumn, the pair — both single — remained friends. Cara said she got the idea for a divorce party after discovering the phenomenon on Facebook and is waiting until she has moved into a new detached four- bedroom home before she throws the bash.
The couple aren’t the first to mark their divorce together. In December, Americans Michelle Mahoney and Jeff Becerra made global headlines by throwing a joint party to celebrate the end of their 24-year marriage.
‘We had a lot of really good parties over the years and I thought, let’s have another one and let this be our last hurrah,’ says Michelle, 48.
But they are the exception rather than the norm. According to those who have held them, most divorce parties are intended to draw a line under the pain of a marriage break up. They’re a public display of bravado, a message to one’s ex.
For Faye Brooke, 45, a divorce party was her way of coming to terms with the end of her 17-year marriage to Richard, 44, which finished following his infidelity. The couple have two daughters aged 17 and 14, and a son aged six.
Dressed in a fitted dress that showed off the 1st 7lb weight loss caused by the shock of what she wryly refers to as her ‘divorce diet’, Faye celebrated the arrival of her decree absolute in March 2015 with champagne and dancing, surrounded by 20 of her closest friends at an upmarket bar.
Presents included a silver ring for her middle finger — what she describes as her ‘I’m divorced ring’.
It doesn’t necessarily sound like behaviour befitting a middle-aged mother of three, whose children were spending the night with their father. But Faye, from Brimpsfield, Gloucestershire, insists it wasn’t inappropriate.
‘The children were supportive. If anything the divorce party showed I was resilient and refused to be beaten. It was a celebration. I was determined not to be bitter.’
FAYE had met Richard in 1992 and, after marrying in July 1997, Faye quit her job as a project manager for a bank to raise their children while supporting his demanding career as a financial director. Theirs was an affluent lifestyle, with luxury holidays and expensive hotels.
‘Although he worked long hours ,Richard was romantic and on my 40th birthday he threw a surprise birthday party. I loved him and had no reason to believe we were anything other than happy together.’
So his bombshell, that he ‘didn’t think’ he wanted to be with Faye for the rest of his life, delivered as she was cooking a roast dinner one Sunday in July 2014, was met with utter shock.
Over the following weeks Richard moved in and out of the family home. ‘ He kept saying he didn’t know what he wanted, but a friend told me no man would walk out on his family in this way unless there was another woman.’
Suspicious, Faye enabled the location services on Richard’s smartphone that August and followed him to the couple’s holiday home in the Cotswolds.
‘Through the patio doors I saw him cuddled on the sofa — our sofa — with a girl in her 20s and knew immediately she was the reason for the break-up of our marriage,’ she says. ‘Richard said he’d only just got together with the girl — who I later found out was his 27-year- old assistant — but I didn’t believe him. I felt utterly betrayed.’
That September, Faye sold their nine- bedroom marital home in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, and the couple’s Cotswolds holiday home, and bought her current house, where she now runs her B&B business. She also filed for divorce.
But the emotional scars lingered. ‘I was too shocked to eat, was prescribed antidepressants and didn’t have the confidence to leave the house,’ she says.
THE week she received her decree absolute, she found her self-esteem was beginning to return and decided to throw her party. ‘I didn’t tell Richard — it was none of his business,’ says Faye. ‘Celebrating was cathartic. It helped me draw a line under my divorce and start a new and happy chapter in my life.’
Charlie Penna’s divorce party began in a hot tub in her garden that she’d hired specially for the occasion, the bubbles from the water adding to the heady buzz provided by the prosecco cocktails.
Then, as the sun set, Charlie and her friends dressed up and continued the evening’s entertainment with canapes and dancing at a local restaurant.
Certainly, the 29-year-old mother of one from Cornwall left no stone unturned. Wearing a T-shirt with the defiant message ‘Ain’t No Wifey’ emblazoned across her chest, she decorated the restaurant with ‘ Just Divorced’ balloons, requested a personalised menu engraved with ‘Happy Divorce Party Charlie’ and set up a divorce-themed playlist on the juke box.
But Charlie, a company director who has a seven-year-old daughter, Teyah, with her ex-husband Steven, 35, is unabashed.
‘My divorce party was a form of closure that made me feel in charge of my destiny,’ she explains. ‘If you’ve been in an unhappy marriage, why not celebrate the fact that you’re free and single again?’
The couple had been together since April 2006, after meeting in a bar. However, their relationship was severely challenged after their baby’s birth in June 2009, when Teyah was diagnosed with a rare chromosome abnormality that left her blind and requiring weekly treatment at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.
But, aged two, Teyah’s condition stabilised and in November 2011 Steven, a store worker, proposed over dinner with a platinum and diamond ring.
‘I was thrilled and viewed marriage as a commitment that should be for life,’ says Charlie.
Their wedding was held at Truro Register Office in September 2012, but marriage didn’t live up to Charlie’s expectations. ‘I grew depressed,’ she says. ‘I loved being a housewife, but my life felt limited by the routine.
‘Steven tried to be supportive, but didn’t understand. In turn, he became withdrawn and we grew further apart.’
By February 2013 he told her he needed a break and moved out. A month later he admitted to Charlie he was in a relationship with an old school
friend. ‘I felt like my heart had been ripped out,’ says Charlie. For legal reasons, Charlie had to wait until September 2013, a year after the wedding, before filing for divorce, which Steven accepted on the grounds of adultery even though he denies the relationships overlapped.
A fortnight after her decree nisi came through in July 2014, Charlie threw her divorce party. ‘ A friend suggested the idea and it made sense. I was sick of wallowing around the house,’ says Charlie.
In addition to her ten closest female friends, Charlie invited her mother, who had divorced Charlie’s father 15 years earlier.
‘She thought it was an empowering idea. Even 15 years ago it wasn’t seen as appropriate to celebrate a divorce,’ says Charlie, who decided against telling Steven. ‘I didn’t want to rub his nose in it or make him feel like a laughing stock. I wanted to celebrate getting my life back. I had expected to feel sad but the evening was cathartic.’
It’s perhaps no surprise that Christine Gallagher, author of the Divorce Party Handbook and a divorce party organiser, insists these celebrations are healing events. ‘Public rituals are important — we have weddings, funerals, and engagements — and now finally an event to mark a divorce,’ she says.
She has helped organise a golf-themed event for a divorcee whose ex-husband was having an affair when he said he was having golf lessons. She recreated a wedding, but with the ex-wife peeling off a wedding dress to reveal a red cocktail dress underneath.
RELATIONSHIP therapist Marisa Peer is more cautious, however. ‘In the Fifties and Sixties, those who had divorced were stigmatised and viewed with shame,’ she says. ‘now we are more flippant towards marriage with expressions such as a “starter marriage” for those in their 20s that suggest the relationship is destined to end in failure before it has even begun.
‘That said, we’re living longer, which means that those who marry in their 20s can expect to spend 70 years with the same person, which is often unrealistic.
‘To this end, when both husband and wife want the divorce, a party can help signify a new beginning. But it is horribly inappropriate if there are young children involved or one party is suffering and the divorcee is celebrating while their former spouse is mourning.’
Suzy Miller, who runs the Alternative Divorce Guide website, adds: ‘A divorce party can be a way to let go, but you can’t celebrate if you’re in pain and still feel petulant and angry with your ex.’
ultimately, not everyone finds a divorce party uplifting. Divorce lawyer Ayesha Vardag, 48, knows this only too well.
She held one after the end of her own five-year marriage to Xavier, now 51 and a partner at a law firm.
‘It was supposed to be a defiant celebration of my freedom,’ she says. ‘Instead, it was a sad, flat affair, with my own heartbreak barely under the surface.
‘It made me feel worse, as if all life had to offer me now was being a lonely single at a series of unsuccessful and humiliating parties.’
Many divorcees might benefit from her experience.
‘Trying to force jollity out of pain may be a bridge too far in what may well still be a fragile state. My advice is: be careful.’
some names have been changed.