Following the 80th annual Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday, celebrities in attendance hit the party scene, starting with Elton John's renown bash, which gained a lot of fame in recent years.

It was usually Vanity Fair's Oscar-night party that drew most stars to its annual celebration held at Morton’s restaurant in West Hollywood, where superstars often attended simply to see other superstars, but with the recent writers' strike and the party's cancellation, most stars flocked to Elton John's AIDS Foundation Oscar Party, where his annual viewing party was already under way.

Held at the Pacific Design Center, the even, which raised $500,000 to benefit AIDS Project Los Angeles, attracted over 750 guests, including celebs such as Best Supporting Actor nominee Tom Wilkinson, Nadine Coyle from Girls Aloud, Lionel Richie, Petra Nemcova and Sean Penn, Simonn Cowell and his girlfriend Terry Seymour , Portia De Rossi, Ellen DeGeneres, Billy Joel, Sharon Stone and Mary J Blige. Harrison Ford together with his longtime girlfriend Calista Flockhart, were also in attendance.

After greeting each table, John pounded out the first of 11 songs, the first time in several years that he has played a full set with an entire band at his own party.

"I've never played at my own Oscar party," John said, "It was so uncertain as to whether the party was going to happen (because of the recently resolves writer's strike,) so we didn't have enough time to ask a younger act to do it. So I said, 'I'll do it!'"

He was joined onstage by Mary J. Blige and Scissor Sisters frontman Jake Shears, for duets.

Sharon Stone took the stage and helped John facilitate an auction. Among the hot items: a set of five celebrity-designed pairs of Chopard sunglasses that went for $35,000, a Helmut Newton photograph of four naked women which sold back to its donator, June Newton, for $900,000, and a 1974 Corvette Stingray, donated by Stone, that sold for a cool mil.

To encourage higher bids, John teased his audience, "I'll take my trousers off," which inspired Stone to add, "I would, but you've all already seen that before."

Other important names probably partied on over to the alternative hot spot in Hollywood - the Governor's Ball in the Renaissance, for which tickets sold out months ago.