VERO BEACH — While it’s true that fundraisers are all about raising funds, every once in a while there is a fundraiser that is just plain fun. With Halloween just around the corner, organizers of Saturday night’s Frightening Formals fundraiser to benefit the Heritage Center and Citrus Museum challenged attendees to don their most hauntingly atrocious formal attire. And boy did they deliver.
Laughter flooded the room as guests arrived, garbed in one outrageous outfit after another. Equally horrifying and adding to the hilarity – many of the get-ups had actually been worn in public at one time.
Event chair Cathie Callery, who chose a Dolly Parton-esque wig to compliment her saucy pink cha-cha dress, said they intended the event to be simply a Halloween dance party – nothing serious, just silly.
The committee had almost as much fun decorating the room as they did partying in it later, adorning it with macabre dolls hanging from the windows, stretches of grey toile and spider webbing and centerpieces of Barbie dolls atop pumpkins surrounded by Halloween candy.
Talented artist Carol Smith contributed a couple of intricately carved pumpkins. “I love Halloween; I carve all sorts of stuff,” said Smith. As she pointed to marble eyes glittering in a spooky face she added, “Every pumpkin talks to you and tells you what it wants to be.”
Joe Tessier, from the 14th Avenue Dance Studio supplied a number of animated Halloween statues, including a creepy door greeter. He also donated his talents as DJ, illuminating the dance floor with laser light shows, enhancing the mood with fog machines, and keeping people on their feet with an upbeat selection that of course included the Monster Mash and the Rocky Horror Picture Show’s Time Warp.
A highlight of the evening actually arrived in a red-satin lined coffin. Sean Pierce and Maureen McIntyre, owners of Carnival Confections in Sebastian concocted an almost life-sized cake, designed as a ghoulishly realistic corpse wearing a powder blue, fondant icing leisure suit.
Also dressed in powder blue, Jim Harpring laughed and said of his tuxedo, “Someone told me this was what Tom Hanks wore in Big.”
He and pretty wife Sandi, in sequins and ruffles, looked ready for an 80’s prom. Nicki and Tim Maslin also got their 80’s on, with Miami Vice style outfits.
Gerrit Klipstine went for a pimped-out look, with a bright orange satin shirt, leopard skin and chartreuse coat with matching wide brimmed hat, and a set of gold teeth. Wife Erica matched in leopard and orange, including enormous orange eyelashes.
Mink stole draped, Marilyn Wallace and Judy Van Saun harkened back to the glamorous Mad Men days, and Randy Wytrval took the robber baron approach, decked out in gold from vest to top hat. Angela Morgan’s Ken doll “date” got a ride for the evening cushioned in cleavage, and as for Heritage Center executive director Rebecca Rickey – well you had to be there.
Later in the evening, Lucy Church and her Zumba ladies arrived to entertain with a flash-mob style dance choreographed to Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
The Heritage Center is managed by the non-profit Vero Heritage Inc. Rentals of the building and fundraisers such as this spooky spectacular are its major sources of income.