Five days after the August 2021 flood, the Tennessee Department of Health needed somewhere in Waverly to sit down with people who had lost their birth certificates. The county health department was closed by water. The state’s own situation report told residents where to go instead: Loyce’s Bridal Shop, 101 N. Court Square. For a stretch that fall, the same address that rents tuxedos and sells prom gowns was where you went to get your vital records replaced.
That is a fair introduction to what this store is in Humphreys County. A town of about 4,300 people does not carry a formalwear shop unless the shop does several jobs at once.
What it carries
Loyce’s appears on the official retailer locators for four prom and pageant labels:
- Jovani
- Amarra
- Alyce Paris
- Johnathan Kayne
Those are the same names carried by shops in Nashville and Chattanooga, stocked here on a square in a county of roughly 19,000 people. The store describes its business as prom and pageant gowns, shoes and accessories, and tuxedo rental. It is a Jim’s Formal Wear affiliate, which is the practical part: a couple can be measured for a rented tuxedo and shop a gown on the same trip, at the same counter, without driving to Dickson or into Nashville. Its Facebook page also lists a bridal side of the business at 203 W Main Street, by appointment.
Jim’s Formal Wear’s dealer listing shows hours of 10 to 5 Monday through Friday and 10 to 2 on Saturday, closed Sunday. Small-town stores adjust in prom season and pageant season, so call the number before you drive.
The drive, and why there isn’t much else
Waverly sits at the junction of U.S. 70 and State Route 13. U.S. 70 is the old Nashville–Memphis road, and SR 13 runs south to Hurricane Mills and Interstate 40, north toward Erin. From I-40 you come up SR 13; from Dickson or Camden you come in on 70. Court Square is the courthouse block in the middle of town, which means parking is a matter of finding a space on the square rather than crossing a mall lot.
Humphreys County has two high schools, Waverly Central and McEwen — a combined enrollment under 800 students across all their grades. Federal school data classifies Waverly Central’s location as rural and remote. That is the shape of the trade area: not one big school district but a scatter of small ones across Humphreys, Houston, Benton and Perry counties, each sending a senior class of well under 150 to the same handful of spring dances. National Public Radio described Waverly as being an hour and a half west of Nashville. For a family in Erin, Camden or Linden, a shop on this square is a considerably shorter trip than the metro.
One more thing worth knowing
The 2021 flood is not background to this town. Seventeen inches of rain fell on August 21, Trace Creek came out of its banks through the middle of Waverly, 20 people died, and structures downtown took water several feet deep. Waverly Elementary and the junior high were abandoned. A store on Court Square that came through that and then held the door open for state health workers has a claim on the place that no listing page can manufacture. What we can say is verified: the address, the four labels, the tuxedo affiliation, and the fact that in the worst week in the county’s recent history, this shop is where people were told to go.