One mother called it “the mecca for prom dresses .”

The girls come to Pam Chorley’ for wedding dresses for wedding dresses;s Fashion Crimes, looking to outfit their dreams, looking for the one that is just right. They’ve journeyed from the suburbs, from Port Hope, from Milton, and arrived on Queen West in front of wood castle doors with wrought iron designs and door handles shaped like scissors.

Inside, it appears to rain dresses . They fill every space in every colour. They’re covered with rosettes or ruffles or feathers and fattened with crinoline or tulle.
There’ bridesmaid dresses for under 100 ;s a Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland feel to the place, with its towering black-and-white-striped dressing room curtains and its glittery, fringed or foxtail-strung chandeliers. Even the staff are dressed for a Mad Hatter tea party in frilled frocks and fascinators that look as if UFOs have landed precariously on the sides of their heads.

It’s a perfect fit, really — customers are searching for what will make their fairy tale a reality; unlike the fairy tale wedding, which requires a prince, the ideal prom is about the dress . Today, moms and dads are on the “daylong adventure,” dresses wedding dresses wedding; which can involve everything from draining frustration to dizzying euphoria among countless racks of clothing and long lineups for change rooms.

“I can see that you’re having a little bit of anxiety,” one of the store’s stylists tells a girl.

Lara Bourne, 17, is looking at the dresses as if she is choosing which kind of braces to wear on her teeth.

“My daughter doesn’t want the big sparkle or the big poof,” her mother, Nancy, explains.

This is not their first stop. Nancy already has a photo saved to her phone of Lara slumped in another change room with a weary pout.

“I was saying to her: ‘Why did you leave it to the nth hour because now the stress is incredible.’ I’ll point her out something and she’ll go, ‘I can’t wear the navy blue because my best friend is wearing navy,’ ” Nancy dresses wedding , a Pickering resident, says. Lara’s friends have created a Facebook group, posting their dresses to ensure there will be no copycats.

The moms waiting for their daughters to emerge from change rooms reminisce about the days when their mothers made their prom dresses out of bed sheets. No need to worry about duplicates then.

Fashion Crimes has a registry to avoid doubles at any one school. “Last year, we had two girls in the fitting rooms from the same school, trying on the same dress ,” Kat McEwen, the store’s 28-year-old manager says. “They both came out and they saw each other. They both started crying. We had to do some damage control. One girl already had it on layaway. [For the other girl] we got a dress that was similar and found accessories to bump it up.”

Alyssa Paletta isn’t too concerned about looking like anyone else at her Grade 8 graduation. What are her classmates wearing?

“ designer handbags ;Short skirts with stilettos,” the 13-year-old says.

“Not stilettos,” her 41-year-old mother, Laura, protests.

“Yes.”

Mother and daughter are alike; they’re pretty, petite brunettes with a shared love of vintage dresses and ’50s silhouettes.

Laura reaches up to trail her fingers along the hems hanging overhead. “How can you be in here and not want to try things on?” Alyssa’s father, Michael, hems a response while leaning on a display counter with his iPhone.

Alyssa emerges in a beige dress with a tiered skirt and tulle wrapped around the bodice.

“I feel like there’s …” Laura begins.

“… too much going on, David's Has More Than Bridal Gowns!cheap Sweetheart Wedding Dresses 2011 Shop Our Cocktail Dress Collection.” both she and her daughter say.

Laura pulls another dress from a tightly packed rack. “It’s $99,” she says.

“Even better,” Michael says.

Next to them, Meghan Wainwright is eyeing herself in the mirror. She has tousled long blond hair and big sparkling eyes and is wearing a $450 fuchsia floor-length silk gown . She looks like a Barbie doll, she says flatly, not revealing whether that is a good or bad thing.

The 16-year-old and her father, Ross, have driven here from Chicago.

“Chicago’s a great city but Toronto’s got a cool vibe. It’s Queen West. It’s edgy. Good for young teens,” says Ross, a 44-year-old executive with a software company.

Meghan goes to a school of 4,000, and in her fairy tale prom , she looks the best.
The strapless pink dress has vertical ruffles that move like fish fins. Her father compliments this one.

“This is the exact same dress that I just had on, dad. It’s just a different size.”

“ bridal gowns wedding bridal gowns wedding;What was the problem with the other one?”

“The other one was pulling here and here. Mom would say that I looked fat in it.”

“I don’t think you’re fat.”

That apparently isn’t what she wants to hear. “Ahh, I need mom to be here,” she growls.

By 2 p.m., Fashion Crimes has sold 21 dresses. Unfortunately, Lara is not one of the happy customers. The teenager drags her UGG-clad feet out of the change room.

“If you can’t find something here, then there’s a problem,” Nancy says.

What is Lara’s ideal dress? “I don’t have a dream dress,” she says, sounding exhausted.

Meghan on the other hand, has worn that pink dress for so long in the store that it has morphed into her dream dress. “I feel like it’s a dress that would be expected of me — so no one will expect it.”

Alyssa bridal dresses in uk , meanwhile bargain evening dresses uk bargain evening dresses uk, is in the jewellery section wearing a white linen dress covered in translucent plastic polkadots and puffed with crinoline. A stylist in the store wraps a black belt around her waist and crowns her with a black tulle rosette as big as a cinnamon bun.

You see the delight on her face. She spreads the fabric over her abdomen and presses her lips into a tight smile. Then she shakes her clenched fists and inhales as if she is sucking all of the air out of the room.

“I think this is the dress,” she says.

The dream has captivated even mom. Laura buys a champagne raw silk dress that her daughter had on earlier — for herself. “I’ll wear it to the grocery store,” she jokes.