Elton's Bachelor Days Toasted

Celebrities mobbed a chic West End nightclub for a glitzy bachelor party to toast the upcoming civil union between rock star Elton John and filmmaker David Furnish.

Ozzy Osbourne and his wife Sharon, model Liz Hurley and musicians Bryan Adams, Gary Barlow and Kid Rock 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 sporting 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, singer Cilla Black playfully promised to ignore the instructions.

"I'm going to get them the tackiest toaster I can find," she 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.