Is celebrating the end of a marriage a cruel way to get back at an ex – or a way to salvage dignity and move on?

The venue was decked out with a heart-shaped piñata, giant Jenga and cupcakes. It was an intimate affair: about 50 people. Emma Barua, a 28-year-old makeup artist from Brighton, arrived in a long, red velvet dress, before changing into a short, red number for dancing. After cutting the cake – vegan buttercream – the crowd began heckling: “SPEECH.” Barua stepped forward nervously and gazed out at the faces of her loved ones. “I looked around the room and said: ‘I didn’t know I had so many friends,’” Barua remembers. “Then I started crying and my friends sang a song about me being great, so I laughed instead of crying.”

If you had stumbled across the get-together, you would have been forgiven for thinking you had crashed a wedding party. But, looking closer, you would have noticed something amiss. First, the groom was nowhere to be seen. And that heart-shaped piñata? Black. The cupcakes – reading “Newly unwed” and “Just divorced” – would have given it away. Barua wasn’t getting married. She was having a divorce party.

Many cultures have rituals to mark the transition from married life to singledom. In Judaism, a divorce document called a get is presented from husband to wife, in the presence of rabbis and witnesses, to spiritually dissolve the union. Divorcing couples in Japan smash a wedding ring with a mallet. Members of the north African Beidane ethnic group hold divorce parties to welcome women back into the community and signal to potential suitors that they are available to remarry. In western cultures, however, divorce is typically met with hushed silence, whispered gossip or sympathetic looks. Divorce isn’t commemorated – and certainly not celebrated. Until now.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘I wanted to make the party about me and my support network’ ... Emma Barua (centre) with two friends at her divorce party. Photograph: Supplied by Emma Barua

Divorce parties are a US import. Christine Gallagher, a divorce-party planner in Los Angeles, kickstarted the trend by writing a how-to manual in 2006. (Tips include buying a penis piñata for guests to whack, and tossing melons carved to look like your ex-partner’s face.) Since then, a cottage industry has sprung up, serving the needs of parting divorcees. Need a “Divorced AF” tank top or “All the single ladies” bunting? No problem.

“We need to recognise divorce as OK and an often positive step,” Gallagher says. “It doesn’t mean you’ve failed or been discarded.” Gallager’s Catholic grandparents were unhappily married, but never divorced; they viscerally hated each other in their final years. Most of her clients are female, although she has thrown parties for men, who favour weekend jaunts to casinos or ski lodges.

Is there a cruel side to all this revelry? Gallagher insists that her intention is to help her clients move on in a healthy and respectful way: “I don’t agree with trashing the ex.” Still, melon-chucking and penis-shaped piñatas don’t sound like classy ways to signal you are getting over it. And being on the receiving end of a divorce party can be hurtful.

For Leah, a student in her 40s from north London, the party her ex-husband threw after they divorced several years ago was calculated to inflict maximum pain. He had been emotionally and financially abusive during their marriage and, after Leah initiated divorce proceedings, he left invitations and a guestlist in her home for her to find. The divorce party was held at her local pub and her ex had invited all their mutual friends, whom he had turned against her. “The whole thing was designed to hurt me,” Leah says. “I’m not saying that because I’m self-centred. There was no reason for him to come to my local pub and leave the invitation on my coffee table.”

In a society that often regards divorce as a failure, divorce parties offer an opportunity to reclaim the narrative

Barua’s divorce party wasn’t about getting back at her ex, however, but a way to thank the loved ones who had been by her side during the difficult breakup. “My friends had suggested making a piñata with my ex’s face on it, but I didn’t want to do that, because it wasn’t about him. I wanted to make the party about me and my friends and my support network, and a celebration of my life moving forwards.”

Ammanda Major, a therapist at Relate, agrees that divorce parties can be helpful. “It shows you’re ready to embrace the next stage of your life and talk openly about what happened ... [and] celebrate the fact that you took action to end something that wasn’t working for you,” she says.

Divorce parties can also commemorate the end of a protracted, and expensive, legal process. “It was an extreme relief,” says Caleb, whose marriage broke down after he came out as trans. “There was a lot of going down to the courthouse. I was never sure if I was doing the papers right.” Catherine Navarro, 35, an area manager from New Jersey, also didn’t realise how difficult it was to obtain a divorce until she tried to begin proceedings. Despite separating from her ex-husband in 2012, Navarro wasn’t able to locate him to serve him with divorce papers. After running a missing persons ad in her local newspaper, Navarro was finally granted a divorce in his absence in May 2019. Walking out of the courthouse, she felt like a teenager again. “I was so happy. I’d never cried tears of happiness like that before.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘It was about celebrating a new chapter of my life’ ... Catherine Navarro’s at her divorce party. Photograph: Supplied by Catherine Navarro

It makes sense, in our digitised lives, that we would find a way to celebrate divorce. As our lives are increasingly lived through the glowing squares of social media, public announcements about life landmarks are de rigueur. We track the births of children in real time, downloading new life one pixel at a time through the modern umbilical cord that is the smartphone. Pre-scripted proposals are shared online in excruciating detail. Weddings are elaborate and dizzyingly expensive. (The average cost of a wedding topped £30,000 in 2018, an all-time high.) Even separations are now announced via public statement. Why not add divorce parties to the mix?

“We have to have parties for everything now,” says Leah, who doesn’t understand the trend. But divorce parties can be a way to salvage some dignity from the messy wreckage of divorce. Gallagher tells me about the $25,000 (£20,000) party she threw for a client in her 50s, whose husband left her for a younger woman. “It was an opportunity for her to acknowledge this horribly humiliating event and get ahold of it and say: ‘I’m fine, I’m moving on and holding my head up high.’” In a society that often regards divorce as a failure, divorce parties offer the newly single the opportunity to reclaim their narratives. “When we divorced, people kept saying: ‘I’m so sorry,’” Barua says. “But I wasn’t sorry. I was in an unhappy marriage.”

Done right, divorce parties can be a celebration of new beginnings, full of joy and hope. “It was about celebrating a new chapter of my life,” says Navarro. Featuring a “Happily divorced” sign and a sheet cake reading “Straight out of marriage”, her divorce party, held in April, was an uplifting affair, set to a soundtrack of 90s hip-hop. “It was one of the best nights of my life. I had so much fun.” Caleb’s divorce marked the beginning of a new, more authentic life. “My marriage was the last thing that tethered me to the period before I came out as trans,” he says. “My ex was one of the only people who deadnamed me ... walking out of the courthouse felt like leaving my past behind.”

After Barua’s divorce party ended, they all piled down to Brighton beach. Sitting on the stones, she felt free. “The divorce party was about celebrating that I’d moved on and learned from my mistakes. There was no regret about what happened.” Still, Barua probably wouldn’t remarry. “Divorce is a long process! I wouldn’t want to go through that again.”

Some names have been changed