[The PerSev]

If this has been posted before, I apologize in advance.

Quote:

The bride wore blue rain boots, her bridesmaids mischievous grins. Wine glasses and tallboy cans in hand, they stomped through the bride’s backyard to the creek where they soiled their gowns in mud, mugging for the photographer. Off-camera, the girls chucked all their finery into a bonfire: a right pagan affair.

The bride, 24-year-old Cynthia Joanne, had signed her divorce papers earlier that day. The Guelph, Ont., administrative assistant decided to celebrate coming through it alive with a “trash the dress” party, women only allowed.

“It didn’t come from a place of bitterness. There was no throwing darts at pictures of my ex,” said Joanne, now 27. Infidelity spelled the end to her three-year marriage. “The party celebrated all the people who helped me through that.”

For women splitting in their 20s after failed “starter marriages,” divorce parties are proving a soothing balm. Many of these blowouts mirror that other big day, the gowns hauled out, tiered cakes ordered, photographers hired, registries put forth – divorce registries, ostensibly for after you lose half your stuff. Like other twentysomethings getting over heartache, these young brides have turned to public ritual, be it elaborate “freedom fests” shared on Pinterest or an evocative post-divorce tattoo (birdcages flung open are a big theme here).

These young divorcées are also poised as a new and lucrative commercial demographic: Not only are many open to marrying again, they’re marking their separations with a whole new array of baubles. Websites likeTrashTheDressOnline.com reveal a whole new world: divorce cocktail dresses, symbolic divorce rings, plus tips for redecorating the house after the ex is gone – think pink “divorcette pads.” Divorce-party planners offer their services online, helping pick out divorce-party music and favours. Chintzy online divorce-party suppliers shill “divorced diva” balloons, black veils and somewhat disturbing penis pinatas. Not cathartic enough? Why not splurge on a miniature mahogany coffin for your wedding band, complete with caustic engraving of your choice? “What better way to bury that ultimate symbol of a dead marriage?” asksWeddingringcoffin.com founder Jill Testa, who divorced after 20 years and received hearty applause when Whoopi Goldberg featured her little caskets on television’s The View. No longer a source of deep shame, divorce is now also a marketable life event, the final stage in the wedding industrial complex.

It’s a new divorce revolution we’re starting,” says Joelle Caputa, 33-year-old founder of Trash the Dress, which also has offshoots in a Pinterest account, “online support group” and the forthcoming book Trash the Dress: Stories of Celebrating Divorce in Your 20s.

Caputa divorced at 29 after a 14-month marriage; her husband didn’t want to have kids, a deal-breaker for her. She said that unlike previous generations that stressed compromise, toiling for years to save doomed marriages,

“This is a group of girls who are strong enough to know they need to get out of a bad situation and turn a really bad experience into something positive.” (Or as Cynthia Joanne puts it, “Maybe we’re just being more confident in ourselves, being our own cheerleaders. We’re listening more to what’s good for us.”)

So who inks up her body or ignites her wedding dress post-split? Caputa, who took a pair of scissors to hers, says many of the women posting on her website experience traumatic marital dissolutions involving addiction, infidelity and domestic abuse.

The occasional divorcée arrives frustrated by an ex’s lack of ambition and video-game habits, but generally speaking, the women who slice and dice their gowns aren’t coming from amicable separations.

More generally, Caputa argues that parties, tattoos and support groups can help because divorcing young carries a particular sting of failure. Friends often can’t relate because they’re freshly married themselves; older family members who hoped for grandchildren may harbour disappointment, especially if they footed the wedding bill and their daughters are now moving back home. “You feel like you’re the only person that age getting divorced,” says Caputa. “It’s very embarrassing.”

Moving from failure to independence was the guiding spirit for Chandra Poirier, who posed on Calgary’s Peace Bridge during her trash-the-dress photo shoot. The Edmonton claims adjuster divorced at 27 after two years of marriage; she decided to use the shoot as an outlet. “I cut the wedding dress short and painted the crap out of it,” said Poirier, who then shoved the gown into a garbage bag in the trunk of her car, later chucking it into a campfire. “It’s not taking up room in my life any more. It’s burned to a crisp,” said Poirier, now 30.

Poirier also got a tattoo near her hip, the words “Have courage” in Sanskrit. Divorce tattoos like hers are mushrooming on Pinterest and Reddit as jilted wives and husbands get inked.

People find them therapeutic, says David Glantz, co-owner of Toronto’s Archive Tattoo, where he’s done some two dozen divorce tattoos. “Frequent themes involve budding flowers, young trees, flowers and foliage, birds, pocket watches and compasses for timing and direction, or just nice, decorative script, things that run with the theme of new growth and/or freedom,” the tattooer said via e-mail. “Maybe they’re on the person doing the divorcing, maybe they’re on the person being divorced.”

Brought to you by the same people who thought of "starter weddings".

Obviously the next step is court orders for men to pay their ex-wife's divorce party.