DIVORCE PARTIES featuring dress burning and the splitting of friends between ex-couples are proving increasingly popular in Ireland.
That’s according to former soap star turned event planner Steven Mangan, who opened up about the growing trend in an interview with the Irish Mirror.
Mangan, who hails from Malahide in Dublin, has planned as many as 60 parties of this kind over the past year through his business That’s Entertainment.ie.
While he’s organised divorce parties for much of the past decent, he’s noticed a significant rise in divorce rituals over the past few months.
Divorce party activities include the gleeful destruction wedding gifts and dousing wedding dresses in pots of paint.
“I have seen a bride burn their wedding dress on a barbecue, after getting guests to throw small pots of paint over it,” he told the Irish Mirror.
“I have seen a woman break up her toaster and kettle wedding gifts and then make mini sculptures out of the bits to give back to her guests as presents.
“I even witnessed one lady who got out her wedding book and got her guests to scribble out their name and vow never to talk to those remaining on the book because they were obviously his friends…So effectively, she was even divorcing the friends.”
While he notes that most men tend to mark their divorces with a night on the tiles, women prefer to do something a little more spectacular.
The craze comes just a few months after a woman in the US went viral after marking the end of her 14-year marriage by blowing up her wedding dress.
Irish divorcees still have to go some way to top that.
