The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way we did everything – including our celebrations.
While many of us love to throw big parties to celebrate our milestones, we’ve been unable to do that for the past year, confined to our homes for safety.
Thankfully, us humans are a creative bunch, and it wasn’t long before people figured out a way to celebrate something with their neighbors at no risk to themselves or others.
We’re talking, of course, about decorative yard signs.
You definitely will have seen these around, especially during the pandemic. Decorative yard signs are pretty effective at bringing a community together, encouraging passers-by to stop and chat from a safe distance.
Mostly, people have been using decorative yard signs in celebration of birthdays, graduations, and anniversaries.
But as Amanda Higgs would tell you, not all yard signs are as conventional as the rest.
Amanda owns 901 Yard Party Signs, a business she started at the beginning of the pandemic that’s still going strong now.
She’s pretty open to creating any type of yard sign – as long as it isn’t rude enough to give her business a bad name.
So despite the fact that her most recent request was a little unusual, she was happy to go ahead with the design.
And what was it celebrating? A divorce.
Okay, it might be out of the norm – but plenty of people really do celebrate a breakup.
Unfortunately, not all relationships are all sunshine and daisies. You don’t marry somebody with the idea that you’ll one day rejoice divorcing them, but it can happen.
When one of Amanda’s customers got divorced, his friends ordered him a sign that read: “Divorced AF”.
Speaking to Local 24 Memphis, Amanda recalled:
“His buddies called me and they were like, ‘he’s going through a long divorce and we just want to make him laugh about it,’ lighten it up because divorces are hard. They’re not fun.”
When Amanda shared a video of the signs on TikTok – accompanied, of course, by Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” – it quickly went viral, with tens of thousands of views in a matter of days.
The best bit? A local divorce attorney who picked up on the video decided to use it as an advertisement.
Amanda isn’t the only Memphis yard sign business owner to have received this slightly bizarre request, either.
Devon Phillips also received a request to create signs for a divorcee who wanted to celebrate his freedom with the world.
A few days after mounting the signs, Devon noticed that her website traffic was unusually high. On further investigation, she found that the client, Marcus Thomas, had shared a picture of the divorce display on social media.
Marcus himself never expected his divorce celebration to prove such a hit.
He admitted:
“Honestly, it was a shocker. I didn’t really think it was going to do that.”
According to Marcus, his decision to put up a display didn’t come out of spite – he was simply celebrating starting over.
He said:
“I feel like if you’re breaking a bad bond, you should celebrate it. You’re starting your life over. It was just a celebration for me, myself.”
Do you think these divorce signs are more hilarious or childish? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
In the meantime, check out the video below for interviews with Amanda and Devon.
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