The address on most listings for this shop — 140 University Town Center Dr, Sarasota — is where it landed when it came to Florida, not where it is now. The store’s own contact page gives one address: Sarabay Plaza, 6513 14th Street West, Suite 129, Bradenton 34207. Same phone number, roughly eight miles southwest of the mall. If you were planning to park at UTC and walk the mall to find it, don’t.
The 14th Street West address puts it on US 41, the main north–south road through Bradenton, in a 37,600-square-foot retail center near 65th Avenue West. Surface parking at the door instead of a mall garage. Bayshore High School is about two miles away on 34th Street West; Southeast, Manatee, Braden River, Palmetto, Lakewood Ranch and Parrish Community are all inside a normal Manatee County drive. Sarasota County students — Riverview, Booker, Sarasota High — are coming north rather than to the mall they already know.
What the store actually is
It started in 2005 in downtown Greensburg, Pennsylvania, later moved into Westmoreland Mall, and opened the Florida store at UTC in July 2022. The Pennsylvania location is still there. Their own description of the Bradenton move is that it lets them serve a broader area, which reads as an accurate description of trading a mall lease for a highway strip center.
House of Wu and Tiffany Designs both list this store on their official retailer locators. House of Wu is the label behind Christina Wu Celebrations for bridesmaids and Christina Wu Elegance for mothers, which lines up with how the shop describes its own racks. Beyond prom, the inventory runs to pageant gowns, mother-of-the-bride and mother-of-the-quince dresses, evening and gala gowns, pantsuits and jumpsuits, shoes, crowns and jewelry.
Quinceañera is a real part of the business, not a sideline
Roughly one in five Bradenton residents is Hispanic or Latino, and the store stocks accordingly. Its site names Princesa as its main quinceañera house, with most of those gowns between $1,498 and $1,998. The rest of the quince inventory sits well below that: May Queen ball gowns listed at $594 and $714, Quinceañera Collection at $615, GLS Collective at $769, Calla Collection at $897, Fiesta Collection at $1,280. Damas dresses come out of the same 300 short dresses they keep on the floor for homecoming and party wear. They also carry quinceañera bears.
Before you drive over
- Call or text first. The store asks for appointments and wants 1.5 to 2 hours with a shopper. There is no fitting fee.
- Hours are limited and the listings disagree. One version has them closed Monday through Wednesday and open afternoons Thursday and Friday; the store’s own note describes Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday hours. Confirm by phone rather than trusting either.
- Stock is 300 short dresses plus special order. If you are shopping close to a dance date, ask what is physically in the store before you go.
As of this writing the site was running a homecoming promotion with most short dresses at $99, which tells you something about where this shop competes: it is not trying to be the priciest room in the Sarasota–Bradenton market. The alternative for a serious full-day gown hunt is driving up I-75 toward Tampa and Brandon, which is close to an hour each way from Bayshore Gardens.