Before you punch 44 W. Main St. into your phone, know that the store is not there anymore. Paradise moved off Main Street in Patchogue and into the Bellport Outlets, at 10 Farber Drive, Suite 4. The phone number did not change: (631) 654-5020. The salon’s own site places it just off Exit 56 toward Station Road, on the north side of Sunrise Highway, and the outlet center says you can see the buildings from the highway as you drive past. Plenty of listings around the web — including this directory’s record — still carry the old village address, so it is worth calling before you drive.
What you get at the new address is a bigger room: the store describes the space as 8,000 square feet. It is a bridal salon first, in business since 1967 by its own account, and prom is one department inside it alongside bridal, bridesmaids, mothers of the bride and groom, sweet sixteen, quinceañera, tuxedos and black tie. That matters in practical terms. A prom shopper here is sharing the floor and the fitting rooms with brides, which is why appointments are worth making even though the store says walk-ins are welcome. Reviewers on the wedding sites consistently describe it as a busy salon.
The four labels verified on their manufacturers’ own retailer locators tell you where the prom racks sit on price:
- Jovani and Mac Duggal — the two names that dominate the beaded, fitted, heavily embellished end of American prom.
- Terani Couture — prom and evening, and the label a mother often ends up buying from on the same trip.
- Alyce Paris — prom and social occasion, including a wider size range.
Alterations are done in house, which is the difference between buying in March and buying in May. Tuxedos are in the same building, so a couple ordering together does one trip instead of two.
Who actually drives here
Exit 56 puts the salon in the middle of the South Shore school corridor. Bellport High School, home of the Clippers, is a few minutes south at 205 Beaver Dam Road in Brookhaven, with about 1,380 students; the South Country district offices are up on Dunton Avenue in East Patchogue, near the old storefront. Patchogue-Medford High School, at 181 Buffalo Avenue in Medford, is the big one — roughly 2,490 students in grades 9 through 12, which makes it one of the largest public high schools in Suffolk County and a lot of prom dresses in one building. Longwood, William Floyd, Center Moriches and Eastport-South Manor all sit farther out along the same highway, north and east.
The outlet center is a strip of storefronts with a surface lot out front, not a mall — you park in front of the door, walk in, and there is no garage to circle. For anyone coming from the Patchogue village side, it is a straight run east on Sunrise instead of hunting for a Main Street spot on a Saturday afternoon. Paradise sells across Long Island, but its natural trade area is the stretch between Sayville and the Moriches, and the fact that it also handles quinceañera and sweet sixteen dresses means the store is busy well outside the spring prom window.