Divorce parties all the rage as decoupling couples follow celebrities’ lead

Date: April 06 2014

Angie Fox

A few weeks shy of her 40th birthday back in August 2012, Sammie Black received her divorce papers in the mail and literally jumped around with elation.

She was so excited, the now 41-year-old communications consultant and mother of two threw a ”divorced and 40” cocktail party for her girlfriends, which she said was cathartic.

”I was extremely depressed in that marriage … I felt like I was in jail in that I wasn’t free to be me. The reason I wanted to celebrate [the divorce] was that it was the next chapter in my life – and it was all looking good.”

Black is not alone in choosing to celebrate her divorce. Like many trends, it started with celebrities. White Stripes singer Jack White and model wife Karen Elson jointly announced their divorce to friends via a divorce party invitation.

British media personality Katie Price threw a three-day divorce party in Ibiza after splitting from Australian singer Peter Andre.

The day former prime minister Bob Hawke married Blanche d’Alpuget, his ex-wife, Hazel Hawke, is believed to have thrown herself a soiree.

The divorce party trend is rapidly growing in Australia and divorce party planners are now staging events that can be as elaborate as a wedding, replete with band, full bar and a divorce cake (black icing and the husband’s head buried beneath).

Last month Gwyneth Paltrow and Coldplay frontman Chris Martin gave the world a new pop-culture reference when they announced they were ”consciously uncoupling”. Gone are the Kramer vs. Kramer-style harrowing depictions of husbands and wives duking it out in court.

The sentiment, to mindfully and honourably end a relationship, provides a new road map for those navigating the tricky terrain of divorce – particularly when children are involved.

More than 40 per cent of marriages in Australia end in divorce. Women are believed to instigate about 70 per cent of divorces.

Black, whose parents divorced when she was four, believes internet dating and greater financial independence is giving women more confidence to ”embrace the change”.

”Nowadays, society is more accepting of a single, working mother. My mum fought very hard to get a bank loan in 1979. I don’t have that issue.”

Psychologist Brett Stathis, 42, is in favour of the industry springing up around divorce.

”It helps people move on knowing they have the support of their friends, and that [divorce] is not something to be ashamed of,” he says.

Melbourne event planner Narelle Parker’s* divorce party was about letting her friends know she was finally ”OK”.

Parker was ”blindsided” in 2009, when her husband cleaned out the family home while she was at work. But more taxing than the relationship breakdown itself were the protracted legal and custody proceedings that followed.

When she finally emerged from the trauma, she invited 150 guests to the Old Melbourne Gaol for a ”freedom” party that featured a spirit bar, live band and karaoke. She even received gifts: sex toys and a ”man-of-all-seasons calendar”.

”It wasn’t about him in any way. There were no burning effigies of him. It was about moving on, not man bashing,” she says.

Parker even invited members of her ex-husband’s family.

”When you marry, you marry a whole community and a family, and it’s the same when you divorce,” she says. ”People forget how tough it is for friends and family. I had the party to say, ‘It’s all OK … I am not going to sit in the corner and cry. It is well and truly done and dusted.”’

*Name changed for privacy.

Sunday Age, April 6, 2014, p. 8