Here are several articles that approach the idea of Divorce Parties that seem to becoming more and more common (kind of like divorce). What do you think of this idea? A celebration of getting your life back on track? A toast to independence and finding new happiness? An excuse to drink a lot and forget the pain you're going through?

Article #1: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=1220206

Many Throw Parties to Toast Divorces
Celebrating a New Beginning Without the Old Spouse
Oct. 16, 2005

After three decades of marriage and years of fighting over a nasty divorce settlement, it's time for Madalyn Pollit to party.

As she toasts to "the beginning of the best years of my life," Pollitt is part of a trend of women and men embracing their breakups with divorce parties.

"A new season, a new me, a new beginning: That's why I wanted the party," Pollit said. "I wanted to celebrate my new life."

Part celebration, part exorcism, the parties typically involve a signature cocktail -- marriage on the rocks.

And, it wouldn't be a party without some games. Remember Diane Keaton tossing her wedding ring into a glass of champagne in "The First Wives Club"? Well, there's "throw the wedding ring in the toilet" and "pin the blame on the ex." And there usually are voodoo dolls.

Less Shame?

With nearly half of all marriages ending before 'til death do us part, divorce has gone from a private shame to a peculiar rite of passage.

Even in the Muslim world, where divorce is still a disgrace, divorce parties offer a way for women to redeem themselves.

In Morocco, single men are invited to the party and they bring the woman perfume, money, even camels. The party lasts for three days or as long as it takes for the woman to find a new companion.

America may not have the camels, but we do have businesses that are cashing in on the breakup party circuit. Plumparty.com sells all the fixings for a great bash. Theytookeverything.com offers a divorce gift registry. And, thousands of copies of "How to Throw a Divorce or Breakup Party" have been sold.

The Right Time to Party?

But this trend doesn't put everyone in the party mood. Some divorcees believe the end of a sacred union weighs too heavy on the heart.

"I don't find anything funny about divorce at all," said Jim Clarke, who is divorced. "I find the whole experience rather tragic."

But marriage therapist Helen Rudinsky says there can be a right time to celebrate.

"You're not grieving, you're not pining over the relationship," said Rudinsky, who practices in Washington, D.C. "You wish them well. It didn't work out. You're going forward."

"It's a different kind of party," Madalynn Politt said. "It's kind of like a New Year's Eve celebration, but it's a new life's eve celebration."


Article #2: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/fashion/13DIVO.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&oref=slogin

O.K., It's Over. So Now Let's Party.

Rachel Dodes
New York Times
Feb. 19, 2005 12:00 AM

HEN Rachel Bendtsen walked through the doors of the Mulberry Street Bar in Little Italy on a recent Thursday night, she was greeted with a cake and a standing ovation. Cameras flashed as she said hello to friends she hadn't seen in three years, since she got engaged and stopped traveling frequently from Minneapolis to New York to visit. Leaning over the cake, decorated with a bird flying out of a cage, she closed her eyes and blew out the candles.

"I am so happy to be a free agent," Ms. Bendtsen, 27, said as more cameras flashed. "And I am accepting applications to make out." Several single men were on hand, eager to apply.

As divorce parties go, this one was pretty tame - no caterer and no band, and the cake was homemade. It was certainly nothing compared to the $20,000 wedding she and her parents had paid for just two years earlier, the one at which 200 guests watched as she pledged to love and cherish her husband forever.

"Once you say you are going to get married, it is hard to get out of it," Ms. Bendtsen said. "So the divorce puts us both back on course. In my case it is definitely cause for celebration."

The divorce party, a hybrid of a bachelor-bachelorette party and bacchanalian exorcism, is emerging as a celebratory occasion, complete with gift registries and a set of social protocols. Once a source of shame, divorce has become its own peculiar rite of passage, so commonplace that more people are looking to commemorate the occasion, even on Valentine's Day, with friends and in public.

Experts see a combination of factors at work, including a growing acceptance of divorce and society's need for rituals to mark important life stages. "Fifty years ago divorce was almost a forbidden thing," said David Popenoe, a director of the National Marriage Project, an interdisciplinary research project at Rutgers University. "Today you do not think of a divorcée as an outcast; you extend your sympathy and sometimes offer your congratulations."

Dr. Reena Sommer, a psychologist and an author of the 2004 e-book "How to End a Marriage: Leaving Your Spouse in 21 Steps," said she often recommends to her clients that they do something special for themselves in the wake of a failed relationship to mark their return to single life.

"If you can afford it, I say find another place to live," Dr. Sommer said. "If not, then redecorate, and start with the bedroom. Buy new sheets." Having a party, she said, "is just another rite of passage, a way for somebody to say, 'It's finally over.' "

It is impossible to determine how popular divorce-and-breakup parties are becoming because they are often small and take a variety of forms - girls' or boys' nights out, a full-blown ceremony involving both former spouses or a Valentine's Day party. But it is evident that divorce celebrations are gaining converts.

Charlotte Eulette of Celebrants USA, a nonprofit group based in Montclair, N.J., that provides people to conduct all kinds of events like weddings, funerals and divorces, said that though divorce parties are still rare, they are becoming more frequent.

"Fifty percent of marriages result in divorce," Ms. Eulette said, "and ideally I would like to hear my phone ring with 50 percent of calls being requests for divorce ceremonies." Her own divorce celebration took place a year and a half ago. It was held in Montclair, at Diva Lounge, and featured a drum procession and a renaming ceremony in which her mother symbolically gave her back her maiden name.

Philip Tabor, a 30-year-old actor, gave himself a breakup party in September. "My godmother said, 'When life gives you lemons, make lemonade,' " he said. "I added tequila." Mr. Tabor, who broke up with his male partner of eight years last summer, sent out invitations with a script-written header, "El Divorcio," for his margarita-drenched party at the Mexican restaurant Café Juanita on the Lower East Side.

"Without sounding too Lifetime television, it was very therapeutic," he said. His friends gave him plenty of liquor, erotic videos and a self-help book entitled "Finding the Boyfriend Within."

And at Andrew Marks's "Single de Mayo" party, which took place in Los Altos, Calif., last May, 80 guests ate Polynesian food and danced to Mr. Marks's "Divorce Mix," which included Carlos Santana's "Black Magic Woman" and Fleetwood Mac's "Go Your Own Way." Friends gave Mr. Marks mostly gag gifts, including a voodoo effigy of his former wife.

"I figured when you get married it's supposed to be this wonderful occasion," said Mr. Marks, 37. "Sometimes when you get divorced it is a wonderful occasion, too."

Businesses, too, are hopping on the breakup party circuit, advertising their services as the perfect pick-me-up for the newly single. At www.theytookeverything.com, the recently broken-up can sign up at the gift registry for anything from a new toaster to a flat panel television. Nearly 4,000 copies of the spiral-bound guide "How to Throw a Divorce or Breakup Party," by Christine Gallagher, a Los Angeles writer, have been sold since she began offering it on her Web site, www.revengelady.com, in mid-2003.

Plum Party, a New York-based party supply company (www.plumparty.com), sells items like a Getting Over Him Kit and an Ex-Husband Voodoo Doll to give as gifts or party favors. At www.breakupnews.com, people can submit their sordid tales of woe and have them written up in the style of wedding announcements.

"Breakups are the new relationships," said Flint Wainess, a Los Angeles screenwriter and a founder of BreakupNews, whose blogging partner is Anna Jane Grossman, a wedding columnist for The New York Post.

Sylvia Weinstock, master of the wedding cake - she made the 10-foot confectionary tower for the wedding of Star Jones and Al Reynolds - said she received her third order for a divorce cake last year. Ms. Weinstock had baked a wedding cake for that client just four years earlier. For the divorce party she baked another wedding cake, but with a difference - she made it appear as if it had been sliced down the middle.

Having a divorce or breakup party raises some thorny etiquette issues. Should the former spouses celebrate together or apart? Is it appropriate to burn the wedding album? In perhaps the greatest sign that celebrating breakups is becoming a trend, Peggy Post, the great-granddaughter-in-law of Emily Post and the editor of the 17th edition of "Emily Post's Etiquette" (HarperResource, 2004) added a section in the book about these sorts of events. This is her advice: skip the party.

"If you are going to have a party at all, make sure you do not demean the former spouse and just don't celebrate the divorce in a public way by being mean," Ms. Post said. "It sounds basic, but it is important."

Don't tell that to Dan Savage, a syndicated sex columnist and editor of The Stranger, an alternative newspaper in Seattle. Mr. Savage might be considered a trailblazer on the angry breakup party frontier: For the past eight years, he has held a Valentine's Day bash on the evening of Feb. 14, at which single people can destroy artifacts from their previous relationships.

"You are in a room full of people who are single and bitter and looking for rebound sex," said Mr. Savage, who will hold the party this year at Chop Suey in Seattle. "It's great."

Dominic Barbara, a Long Island celebrity divorce lawyer whose clients include Lindsay Lohan's father, Michael, and Victoria Gotti, said one of his clients is giving a Valentine's Day party this year with her former husband to celebrate their divorce at a four-star New York restaurant. Mr. Barbara, who wouldn't reveal the name of his client, said that the client and her former husband are investment bankers who decided to split $20 million between them instead of enduring a drawn-out legal battle. "They threw the prenup in the garbage," Mr. Barbara said.

A 43-year-old woman named Sasha, who spoke on condition that her last name not be published, has a breakup gala scheduled for this weekend in Los Angeles featuring salsa dancers and a fire pit for burning old photos. (Sasha is from Los Angeles but now lives in central Massachusetts.) The party's centerpiece, a mounted deer head - her former boyfriend's first kill, which she took from his home - is also en route to the fire pit, in commemoration of her return to being single.

"I win because I've got the trophy," she said.

Back at Rachel Bendtsen's divorce party a few Thursdays ago, friends drank vodka, traded jokes about marriage and quoted famous divorced people like Mae West and Woody Allen. "I love this one: 'For a while we pondered whether to take a vacation or get a divorce, but then we realized a trip to Bermuda is over in two weeks and a divorce is something you have forever,' " said Oded Burger, a guest at the party, quoting Woody Allen.

Miguel Drake-McLaughlin, who organized Ms. Bendtsen's divorce party, said he and his friends wanted to learn from it.

"We wanted to set a precedent," Mr. Drake-McLaughlin said. "Now, when other friends of ours get divorced, we'll know what to do."


Article #3: http://love.ivillage.com/lnsproblems/lnsdivorce/0,,michon_7k4034zv-p,00.html

Divorce: A Reason to Party?
How food, drinks and the support of friends helped this Grrl Genius move on
by Cathryn Michon

Email this page Print Nobody puts on a pouffy white dress with sleeves big enough to hold roast turkeys and thinks she will get divorced, but that's exactly what happens about half the time. The average cost of a wedding ceremony is $18,000 ‑- but you do get free toasters and cake out of it. Interestingly, the average divorce also costs about $18,000 (for each person!), but only one of you will get the toaster, and if you want cake, well, you'd better bring your own.

Odds are you'll also need pie, ice cream and brownies. When I went to my divorce court dates, I used to bring along a sports bottle filled with classic Hershey's syrup. Every time something didn't go my way ‑- which was pretty much every moment I was there ‑- I'd pound back a few gulps of that lifesaving elixir.

As a Grrl Genius relationship expert, I am here to tell you that life after divorce can be tolerable, or even wonderful. The statistics back me up: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the rate of divorce for second marriages is lower than for firsts, with first marriages failing at a rate of 51 percent and second marriages calling it quits 43 percent of the time.

Here's what happened to me: I got divorced, thought I was going to die, didn't, and then met the love of my life. Divorce was painful, but now, a couple of years after the fact, I can honestly say my life is so much better. Getting out of my marriage was good for me the way that getting out of Austria was good for Maria von Trapp.

One of the (many) problems with divorce is that there is no standard ritual to commemorate the event, such as there are for other life-changing occurrences like births, graduations, weddings (of course) or the release of a new Denzel Washington movie. Most rituals include some kind of social gathering. You might be thinking, Hey, divorce is awful ‑- why would you have a get-together for that? The fact is, we have rituals and parties for bad things all the time. I mean, what is a funeral after all, except a party to make you feel better about something really, really bad.

If we had funerals for dead marriages, at least the guest of honor would be able to hear the condolences and drink the margaritas.

Other cultures have rituals for divorce. In the Ndebele tribe of South Africa, when a woman marries, the husband gives her a series of necklaces, which artificially lengthen her neck and cause her neck muscles to atrophy. When they divorce, they have a ceremony where he takes back the necklaces and her head flops to one side until her muscles retrain themselves.

In Morocco, where divorce is a new phenomenon, a divorced woman is given a party by her friends. There is music and dancing, and men who are interested in the divorced woman come to the party and bring her presents like camels (the animals, not the cigarettes) and jewelry. The party lasts for three days, or as long as it takes for the woman to accept another marriage offer.

Personally, I'm always happy to have jewelry (I figure I can always use it to hold up my neck), but I don't think I would have cared for a camel or a new husband that soon after my divorce. But maybe that's just me.

Still, I think the idea of a divorce party seems like a good one. According to Divorce Magazine (which sounds about as much fun to subscribe to as Bad Skin Monthly or Why Does Everything in My Life Go So Wrong? Digest), these parties are becoming more popular.

When I got divorced, my personal Grrl Genius club actually threw a surprise shower for me to replace what I had lost in the divorce. I was overwhelmed by their generosity, and it was great to once again have spatulas and a nice set of measuring cups. (Although I wouldn't have minded getting my 20s back, but that's not exactly something you can register for at Target.)

What I didn't know was that there had been a lot of controversy among my friends as to whether throwing a divorce party was a good idea, or whether it was the kind of thing that would make me feel like an even bigger loser.

My cousin Jen, who is a 28-year-old bride-to-be, decided to consult her Peggy Post etiquette bible. Peggy thinks that divorce parties should be private and discreet. In her opinion, it is bad taste to have a public ritual where you belittle the former spouse in a mean-spirited fashion. (This ran steadfastly against my married friend Kim's desire to burn my ex in effigy.)

Kim, who is a high-powered exec and sometimes takes her killer boardroom tactics into her nonwork life, felt that there definitely needed to be some kind of bloodlust element to the event. I was later told that her suggestion was "Let's have a really good chocolate cake made in the shape of a man, and in the center we'll have this huge pink frosting heart that Cathryn can cut out and eat!"

My girlfriends finally calmed Kim down by agreeing to make the party a barbecue, with a suckling pig on a spit. Kim insisted on referring to the pig by my ex's name, and that seemed to quench her thirst for revenge while still allowing my cousin to feel that we were being white-glove Peggy Post correct.

Jen did feel the party needed some kind of ceremony, and after much debating, my friends finally settled on a naming ceremony. During this ritual, I took back my maiden name and then my friends helped me fill out the many DMV, credit card and government forms that process entailed. At some point Jen started tentatively singing "Kumbaya," but we put a quick stop to it by refilling her piña colada.

The party didn't make me feel like a loser. I felt loved and supported. We didn't rip up my wedding album; we didn't burn my bridal gown and roast marshmallows over it (yet another of Kim's suggestions). The dress was expensive, so I donated it to Goodwill, figuring it would be worth a few dollars in sleeve de-poufing fees to remake it into a lovely dress for some other hopeful bride.

My divorce party had all the qualities of a good Irish wake. There was laughing and crying and eating and drinking. Predictably, the highlight of the party for me was the delicious chocolate cake from LedasBakeShop.com, which is my favorite. It wasn't shaped like a man, and I didn't ritualistically cut out any of his frosted organs. It was just an old-fashioned birthday cake with big pink flowers, a cake that says "Here's to you ‑- we know the world is a better place with you in it."

Because, really, all my friends were trying to tell me was that they were sorry for my loss and they loved me no matter what. If you've got a friend who's going through a divorce, trust me, she'll appreciate the thought, but even more than that, she'll appreciate the cake.