BLAKELY, Pa. -- Friends and family stood in awe as Ann and Paul Millan of Dunmore removed the cover from their custom headstone.
"It's amazing. The detail, it's very detail oriented. It's intricate. It's absolutely gorgeous," said friend Alexandra Mara.
The Millan's spent months working with folks from Monuments by Parise in Blakely on the one-of-a-kind headstone they say they will cherish forever.
Ann says she's bought tombstones for relatives before, but she didn't want someone to have to do that for her.
"I never had the closure of them saying, 'Oh yeah, that's nice.' I didn't have the closure. So I wanted to design my own and it started off small and I sort of snowballed it," said Ann Millan.
Millan spent her career saving animals as a humane officer and wanted to make sure the rescues that changed her life, made their marks for eternity.
"We had our hands full, and we had a lot of rescues, a lot of animals in our lives that all touched our hearts, so it's my way of remembering them," added Millan.
Friends of Paul and Ann Millan tell Newswatch 16 this unveiling party and the one-of-a-kind headstone have inspired them.
"It takes a moment that you know is nothing anyone can escape a path we're all on," said friend Sharon Soltis-Sparano. "and not leaving that to other family members to do so it does inspire me and I think it's gonna be a new project for me now."
Friends of the couple say they've never been to a party like this but think it was an uplifting take on a grave situation.
"It's a different approach that I never heard of, but I think it's an enlightening approach," said Soltis-Sparano.
"It's sort of like our pre-death, but we're here to enjoy it with everybody else," Millan said.
As headstone-unveiling party favors, Ann kept with the theme and gave each of her guests living will documents that they can fill out.