From E-Mail to Parties, Ex-Spouses Find Their Own Ways to Tell the World
Shanna Moakler – former Miss USA, reality TV star and “Dancing with the Stars” contestant – once happily played out her marriage in front of millions of MTV viewers.But when she divorced her husband in 2006, she didn’t mope.
Moakler, the “Meet the Barkers” star, held a divorce party.The celebration was held in Las Vegas, at the Bellagio’s nightclub. The party also had its own three-tiered cake – a pink confection displaying a blonde bride with a butcher knife, her groom fallen and bleeding at the bottom. “At the end of the day, this isn’t the worst thing in my life.People go through it every day,” she told People magazine.
Divorce parties are not new. In 2003, Christine Gallagher wrote, “How to Throw a Break Up Party.” Since then, she has updated the concept, with her new book, “The Divorce Party Planner.” A divorce party” is an opportunity to vent, to cry, laugh, yell, whatever you need to do, in the company of loving friends and family. “Friends can throw a party to show their divorcing pal that they are supported, loved and not alone,” Gallagher writes on her Web site, DivorcePartyPlanner.com. “The party can be a great way the newly divorced person can thank all the people who stood by them through the ordeal of separation. The party is an opportunity to announce your new status in life.You are now single and available for new experiences and even new relationships.”
Not everyone agrees that a divorce party is the correct choice. “I think it should be at everybody’s own discretion how they break that news and let people know, but if there are children involved, there should not be a divorce party,” says Kristy Dustin, a divorce mediator in San Bernardino, Calif. “When we’re in a lot of emotional pain, we’re not thinking as clearly as how we would like to share this. If it were six or eight months out, we would probably think it through a little more.”
Ron Summers, a social worker at the White Bird Crisis Center in Eugene, Ore., is unsure. “That would depend largely on what kind of a person you are in terms of how social you are.I don’t know if it’s wrong or right,” he says. “For some people, they are so happy to get out of an unhappy relationship that they want to do something to celebrate.”
Dominic Thomas found another way to tell everyone – not a divorce party but sending out a mass e-mail. He chose 100 out of the approximately 900 people in his address book to be recipients of his major life-changing announcement. “I wrote a fairly long piece,” says Thomas, a professor at Emory University in Atlanta. “The statement I made was crafted to be fairly neutral, certainly not condemnatory of my ex-wife.It was certainly a goal not to vilify her.”
Thomas had already completed the divorce when he decided to announce it.He received responses almost immediately. “I got a number of responses from a group of people I know I’d been corresponding with over the years,” he says.
Thomas believes that any critics should take a closer look at American culture. “For some people, it (a divorce announcement) is certainly appropriate. For most major life experiences, we do send out announcements in this culture.Baby announcements, weddings, 40th anniversaries, Christmas update letters.It’s all over,” he says. “What’s novel about a divorce announcement is somehow it seems taboo to us.”
After the success of Shanna Moakler’s party in the media spawned copycat divorce parties across the country, Light marketing vice president Andrew Wintner announced plans for the Bellagio’s new divorce party program. “We will help celebrate their first day of freedom,” he told The Entertainment News Network.
As for Moakler, she received criticism from the media and online celebrity blogs. CelebSource.org asked the question, “Is this tacky or what, and beyond childish?” and The Los Angeles Times called it “kind of retro Vegas”. Her response: “This is how I’m showing the world that divorce is OK. It doesn’t have to be the end of your life.”
