UPDATE

they night was a huge success and everyone involved had a great night , i am in process of uploading all the pics from the night onto the facebook page 

https://www.facebook.com/joannasvintageviolets

I am arranging an that event will be raising funds for Invest in ME, a charity very close to my heart. Both my son and daughter suffer from ME. Both of them first became ill as teenagers, went into remission as young adults and unfortunately became ill again with the disease in their mid twenties. 
In the sixteen years since my son first became ill, very little progress has been made with research. We know, from the small number of studies that have been funded that there are many biological abnormalities in the body of an ME patient. And yet, there has been very little funding to find effective treatments or even a cure. When my kids became ill again, we discovered that, despite the many years that had passed, doctors still couldn't offer any kind of treatment aimed at addressing these abnormalities, only therapies to help them manage and live with their condition.
This is where Invest in ME comes in. For researchers, ME is considered to be one of the last few areas of medicine where you can still make a breakthrough. They want to do this research but many of them struggle to get funding. Invest in ME are currently raising funds for a UK trial of a drug called Rituximab. The original studies in Norway were extremely promising. Two-thirds of ME patients given the drug had a major or moderate improvement. But to get this licensed as a treatment for ME, more research has to be done in order to verify the results and look further into why this is so effective. 
So hopefully you can see why this is such an important cause. This research gives hope to the 250,000 people in the UK estimated to suffer from ME and they have been waiting a long time for this research to be done. The charity is run entirely by volunteers so 100% of the money raised will go into research.

i set up this page as i know there are lots of people who cant make the event but would still like to donate to this worthy cause