Most listings put this shop at 114 W Main Street. The formal dresses are one door over, at 112.
Marla Jarman opened Pink Willow Boutique on West Main in downtown Wallace in May 2020, in the middle of the first Covid spring. That store is everyday clothing in sizes S–3XL, plus shoes, jewelry, gifts and home décor. Her daughter Morgan manages it. Formal wear eventually outgrew a rack inside a general boutique and got its own address: Pink Willow Formal, 112 W Main, which the business describes as a boutique geared toward prom and other special occasions. The website still calls it the new formal store, and the formal pages on the site tell shoppers plainly that there are more options at 112 than online. One phone number, (910) 665-1700, covers both doors.
What is in the formal store
Two designers list this address on their own retailer locators: Ashley Lauren and Jovani. The formal shop’s Instagram describes the mix as prom, mother of the bride and special occasion, so a mother and daughter shopping the same night are both accounted for. Short dresses on the website run roughly $250 to $480; long gowns start near $500 and mostly sit in the $540–$700 range, with an outlier above $1,300. Jim’s Formal Wear also lists 112 W Main as a tuxedo location, which means a couple can handle both halves of prom on the same block.
One policy matters more than anything else here, and the store states it on every formal page: formal dresses cannot be refunded or exchanged, and all sales are final. Decide in the store, not in the car. Alterations are not mentioned anywhere in the shop’s own material, so ask about them by phone before you assume a hem is included.
Hours, and which door
| Store | Address | Listed hours |
|---|---|---|
| Pink Willow Formal | 112 W Main St | Tue–Fri 11–5, Sat 10–3 |
| Pink Willow Boutique | 114 W Main St | Tue–Fri 10–5:30, Sat 10–3 |
Both are closed Sunday and Monday, which rules out the two days a working parent is most likely free. Saturday gives you five hours, and Saturdays in March and April are the busiest of the prom calendar in this part of eastern North Carolina. Calling first is the difference between a fitting and a browse.
Who shops here
Wallace is a Duplin County town of a few thousand people, and the public high school that serves it is Wallace-Rose Hill, out on High School Road in Teachey, a few minutes north. Duplin County Schools runs five high schools, so students from Rose Hill, Teachey and the farms and small towns between them are all within a short drive of West Main. Wilmington, with its malls and chain formalwear, is roughly forty minutes down I-40 — close enough to be a real alternative, far enough that a downtown shop with two designers on the wall saves a family most of a Saturday.
The block itself is a working downtown, not a strip: on-street parking, a coffee and cupcake shop, a vintage clothing store a few storefronts along. Downtown fills up in May for the Carolina Strawberry Festival and again in December for Christmas at Twilight, so if a dress errand lands on one of those weekends, park a street back and walk in.