Almost everything at this shop runs on an appointment. Wedding gowns, bridesmaids, mothers’ dresses, all booked ahead, with the store asking for two to three weeks’ notice on bridal and about ninety minutes on the calendar for the visit. Prom is the one thing you can walk in for. The store says so plainly on its own prom page: appointments are not required, visit anytime during store hours.
That matters more than it sounds, because this is not a mall with mall hours. The shop sits on US Route 9, New Loudon Road, in the Latham stretch of the town of Colonie, in eastern New York, and its schedule is short enough that checking the store’s site before driving over after school or after work is worth the thirty seconds. The store answers texts and email, and says later appointments are always available on request. If you would rather have a consultant set aside for prom anyway, the FAQ suggests booking about two weeks ahead.
The price band is published, which is unusual
Prom dresses here are listed at $399 to $699, in sizes 00 through 30. That is a narrow, honest band, and it tells you what kind of trip this is. There is no clearance wall promised and no $150 rack advertised; if your ceiling is $250, this is not your first stop. If you are budgeting four to seven hundred for a gown the store says it hand selected for quality, fit and wow factor, it is.
The store does not name its prom labels online. What it describes instead is range: sparkle, simple, bold colors, ruffles, tight fitted, ballgown, in its own words, plus what it calls exclusive styles you will not find anywhere else. Fitted stretch and sequin pieces, ballgowns, and the sparkle-heavy silhouettes that dominate current prom collections are all in that description.
Who drives here
Shaker High School is in Latham itself, on Watervliet-Shaker Road, with roughly 2,000 students, one of the larger high schools in Albany County. Colonie Central, Shaker’s longtime rival on the other side of the town of Colonie, is a short drive. Cohoes, Watervliet and Troy are all close in, and the northern edge of Latham is the Crescent Bridge over the Mohawk River, which puts Halfmoon and southern Saratoga County within easy reach.
The store points people to Exit 7 of the Northway, where the limited-access section of Route 7 dumps onto Route 9.
If mom or a bridesmaid is shopping the same trip
Book it. Prom walk-ins are welcome, but mothers’ gowns and bridesmaid dresses are appointment-only, and the store recommends ordering those at least six to seven months before the wedding because they can take up to five months to arrive. Bridal gowns are a different tier entirely, $1,898 to $3,500, with customized one-of-a-kind dresses starting at $4,000, so do not expect prom pricing to carry over to the wedding side of the floor. The shop also offers dry cleaning and preservation for bridal gowns at a discounted rate for its own customers.
Longevity is easier to show than to claim. The store’s own line is that Yvonne and her family have helped thousands of Capital Region brides, mothers, bridesmaids and prom girls, and its website copyright runs back to 2002. The shop has been dressing Capital Region proms for a while, whatever its exact start date.