Elton John hosts
celeb-packed bachelor party

Celebrities mobbed a West End nightclub for a glitzy bachelor party to toast the upcoming civil union between Elton John and David Furnish. Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne, Elizabeth Hurley, Bryan Adams, and Kid Rock were among those who streamed into the gala event Monday night in London's Soho neighborhood. John and Furnish slipped into the Too2Much venue just minutes before the show started.

Shirtless waiters wearing black ties and riding boots served guests flutes of champagne. The nightclub, once a strip club known as Raymond's Revue Bar, features an auditorium with red leather and banquette seating, a bar decorated with Swarovski crystals, chairs dipped in rubber, and sculptured glass walls.

Deliveries of sushi and presents arrived at the main entrance as the celebrities partied on. Though the couple had asked revelers to give donations to AIDS charities in lieu of gifts, Cilla Black playfully promised to ignore the instructions. "I'm going to get them the tackiest toaster I can find," the singer told reporters.

The star-studded bash came ahead of a private ceremony to seal the couple's civil partnership. Hundreds of same-sex couples plan to form civil partnerships in England and Wales on Wednesday, the first day that such ceremonies become possible under new legislation offering gays many of the legal protections available to married heterosexuals. Civil unions became legal in Northern Ireland on Monday and in Scotland on Tuesday. (AP)