A FORMER couple from California, the U.S., put the “part” in “party” when they turned their divorce into a music-and-food-filled celebration for their friends and family.

    Michelle Mahoney and ex-husband Jeff Becerra, both 48, married 24 years ago, but after two years of separation and counseling, they agreed that it was time to dissolve their partnership.

    But Michelle said that they decided their marriage would go out with a bang.

    “I’m a party girl,” she said. “I thought it would be something that would be slightly controversial but really fun, and I thought why not? It was our last hurrah.”

    So on Saturday the Berkeley pair invited over their friends and family, handed out fortune cookies with messages such as “Eat, drink and remarry!” and ended their marriage in style.

    They even had a cheery “Just divorced” sign painted on the back of a car. Not that it went down well with all their guests.

    “Almost everyone had a surprised element to their response,” Michelle said. “I would say maybe 70 percent were supportive and some people didn’t come because it didn’t make them feel comfortable.

    “Whether it was because of the sanctity of marriage or their own marriage I don’t know.”

    But she says while “a lot of people who came to the party out of support, but not out of understanding,” many left with their eyes opened.

    “Probably half of the people that were there were initially uncomfortable with how to handle our new relationship — who to be friends with, who to talk to about it all,” she said.

    “So to invite them as a couple into our lives as separate people now, it actually removed all of that. It said ‘We’re still here, we’re still the people we’ve always been.’”

    And a big part of that was keeping their sense of humor.

    “We wanted it to be fun,” she said, “we wanted to make jokes all along the way because there’s a huge stigma around divorce — and there shouldn’t be, given that half the marriages end in divorce.

    “We wanted to normalize it. We’re the same people, we love each other, we always have — we just don’t want to romantically love each other for the rest of our lives.”(SD-Agencies)