Each of the property's main area's held its own scene, from the Alex Brothers' acoustic guitar performance and the Latin food served in Vida to the cabaret setting created in the Fleur de Lis Ballroom, where Howard sang. Just off the main lobby, Monn re-created the hotel's recognizable "cheese wall" in the Luster Gallery around a 50-foot reflecting pool with circular mirrors of varying sizes dotting the grass. Adding to the garden atmosphere were two 24-foot bonsai trees housing numerous white birds.

Guests' final stop was the 35,000-square-foot ballroom that had been converted into the 1950s-era Sparkle evening club.

"This project has come to be not a reinvented hotel but a continued invention," said Monn. "Morris Lapidus's original vision was that more is always more, and he wanted a place in the sand that was a combination of 1950s Hollywood glamour and the exotic Latin flavor here in Miami. "

Channeling that Hollywood glamour, the space was filled with curved bars, screens, and sleek furniture. Adding a final flourish, the curtains draping the stage where Robin Thicke performed-and surprise guest Mariah Carey would later take over-were made of more than 40,000 Swarovski crystals.

Throughout the night, guests enjoyed a variety of delicacies from the hotel, including more than 1,200 stone crabs, 800 bottles of Veuve Clicquot Champagne, and extensive food stations and samplings from the property's four signature restaurants.

In the current economy, a lavish celebration like this one is no longer the norm. But Monn felt it was important to give the iconic property a celebration it deserved.

"You can't just scale back a multimillion dollar project that's been in the works for years," he said. "So we asked ourselves, 'How can we be sensitive and appropriate for what we feel today?' My work is about beauty and elegance, and it's never about ostentatious consumption of any kind, which is the reason I like to think I was hired for this. But most importantly, the event will start the property out as what it was really meant to be and feel like."