Mariah Carey Moves on From Her Divorce With a Las Vegas Residency - Closer Weekly

Dressed in a sexy, cleavage-baring blue dress, Mariah Carey waltzed into Craig’s restaurant in West Hollywood, smiling from ear to ear.

“She looked confident and gorgeous,” an observer to her Jan. 14 entrance tells ‘Closer.’

Following her recent divorce, the pop singer, 45, needed a reason to feel good. A day later, she went on TV to announce her first-ever residency at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, which begins May 6.

Mariah performing in December 2013.

“It’s a new chapter for me, so it’s exciting,” she told Ellen DeGeneres.

After weathering her split from husband Nick Cannon last year, Mariah is intent on moving forward. “As painful as it was to come to the realization that her marriage is over, it forced Mariah to stop living in the past and start looking toward her future,” says an insider.

Mariah with her ex-husband, Nick, and children in 2012.

Last summer, Nick, 34, confirmed that the couple — parents to 3-year-old twins Monroe and Moroccan — has been separated “for a few months.” Yet an insider confides that Mariah held out hope for a reconciliation as recently as December.

The pair, who married after a whirlwind courtship in 2008, spent Christmas together with the twins in Aspen, Colo., but “Nick warned Mariah that he’d moved on and she would too,” reveals the insider, adding, “They’ve worked out most of the financial arrangements, and the divorce will likely be settled within the next month.”

To read the full story on Mariah, pick up the new issue of ‘Closer Weekly,’ on newsstands now!