It used to be that when a friend was getting divorced that you were ready to provide her with a shoulder to cry on. These days you may find that you need to be ready to help her plan a divorce party. I had always thought of divorce parties as something that only the bitterest of women would consider, but when I found out that there are companies providing divorce party products and authors publishing divorce party guides, I knew I needed to learn more.
After I wrote a series of articles about divorce parties, women began writing to me and sharing their divorce party stories and even a few videos from their divorce parties. I quickly discovered that just as divorces can be amicable, ugly, or somewhere in between, divorce parties also fall into similar categories. Here are the typical scenarios of the divorce party stories that were shared with me.
The Hooray It’s Over Party
The wildest divorce party stories and videos that I received fell into this category. These parties were a true celebration of the marriage being over and the divorce being final. I received videos of wedding dresses being set ablaze and women cutting phallus-shaped cakes into very tiny pieces. It’s no great surprise that these parties stemmed from ugly divorces.
At first glance I thought that this type of divorce party was very offensive because it seemed to center so much around celebrating the divorce. After reading stories about divorces where ex-husbands fought to get the wedding china only to send it back to their ex wives smashed into mere fragments, I could understand these women feeling gleeful as they stuffed marriage licenses down the drain and turned on the garbage disposal. The women who did throw these parties still had a lot of anger about their divorce, and several expressed that being able to have a night of ranting about their ex was cathartic. If that’s what it takes to get rid of your anger, then I do think that it’s healthier than just hanging onto your rage without any outlet for it.
The Sisterhood Party
By far these were the most common types of divorce parties that women told me about. The focus of these parties was to let the newly divorced woman know that she is not alone. There was still the occasional destruction of the marriage certificate or burial of the wedding ring, but these seemed to be gestures of providing closure with a focus on moving forward rather than being angry.
