This blog post covers work discovered through attending my work placement at Societe Jersiaise as well as this relating to my work for my personal investigation and I will be using this information mainly as research to work in conjunction with my project regarding my parent’s divorce and how this has since shaped my own life living two different experiences, one with my mum and the other with my dad. I encounter this notion of divorce parties when at Societe Jersiaise as the database lacks any information on divorces in Jersey and instead has over 100 images relating to marriages and weddings but this interesting discovery of divorce parties intrigued me and I thought that the information found would work well in conjunction with what I produce, even I do not produce anything [images] relating to the celebration of divorce – but on a deeper level – this whole project is a celebration of divorce as I am documenting this as it happened in the past and I am also showing it now and what has come of it – a celebration in its own right because the vent has in-turn affected me and made me a different prosper to who I would have been if they stayed together – one I am proud to be. My project looks at the fragility of relationships and the intimacy that comes with all relationships in a lifetime – to me intimacy is what makes a relationship strong because knowing a person inside and out, something I feel I possess with my relationship with my mum, my girlfriend and my sister, is crucial to feeling like you have a place within this world – this fast-moving world where often you can feel very isolated and this project looks to challenge that while supporting this realism through underlying moods and tones shown through my images – as much as it about finding a balance between two oppositions, it is good for these conflict at times; for example, loneliness and acceptance or cohesion and destructiveness of familial bonds.

The information to follow covers divorce parties and what they are and what the subject of divorce parties are supposed to take from it. However, I do believe that it would be interesting to perhaps get in contact with a wedding planner on Jersey to inquire as to whether the have weer actually organised a divorce party for a local and go from there with regards to including it in my project.

Once I discovered this idea of divorce parties, I did some research into it in order to see if it could get me anywhere and if it intrigued me. I found an article on The Guardian Online which covered the celebration and in particular interviewing a specialist in divorce party planning and a lady who has made a living out of it. You can read the full article above in the hyperlink but for now, I am going to list the notes made from reading into divorce parties from several sources. I also got some information from the planner’s website dedicated to booking a divorce party.

Divorce Parties 

• Attempts to allow subject to get past pain of being divorced
• there are divorce party planners who make a living out of it
• Idea of rituals and ingrained traditions of celebrating birth, marriage, death bit not divorce…
• Throw a divorce party to forget and vent anger of a cheating partner
• If you want to become the person you used to be when single – to feel more independent and free
• It is often women who want to throw a divorce party to forget their cheating male partner
• It is a riddance of bad memories – revenge
• E.G. one woman burnt cheating husband’s trophy on bonfire at the party
• E.G. another woman threw wedding ring into sea and some burn their wedding veil or wedding photos
• “There has been a couple guys but men don’t seem to need the display of support like women do”
• There is a divorce party handbook which outlines etiquette at parties and what the evening would consist of etc.
• It reiterates the importance to maintain relationships with people around you – however, detachment can lead to attachment onto other things to forget what once was happy times