With formals all around the school year, girls are always on the hunt for a good dress. Whether it is for prom, Beauty and Beau, the charity ball, or homecoming, there are many dress stores and boutiques to accommodate your every need. Once Upon a Dress, located off of Highway 51, has a variety of long and short dresses, along with jewelry and other nice clothes such as skirts and tops. The pricing on these items is typically very reasonable and affordable. The staff there is very friendly and always ready to help and find a dress that will look amazing on you. They even keep up with you after and love to receive pictures of your dress at the event, which is a special personal touch that not a lot of dress stores do. 

The Dogwood shopping area has multiple places to get dresses, the most noticeable being Mia Bella Prom & Pageant. This store mainly carries longer and more extravagant  formal dresses that one would typically see at prom or Beauty and Beau. These dresses are more on the expensive side, but the selection and amount that the store carries is probably one of the best in the Jackson-metro area. While this is the only formal dress-focused store in Dogwood, there are other clothing boutiques in the area that carry shorter dresses for homecoming and the charity ball. Diva Dolls and W by Azwell have unique ones that usually cost less than one hundred dollars. 

The Dillard’s juniors’ dress department also has a wide variety of dresses to choose from. They are very good about staying stocked on every size and color you can imagine. Another store in the Northpark Mall area is Windsor. Like Dillard’s, Windsor has every dress one could need and for a very good price, ranging from as low as twenty dollars to one hundred. Though they may have cheaper prices, the Windsor dresses are good quality and very cute. While Dillard’s and Windsor have good prices and every color and size you need, it is important to remember that because of their seemingly unlimited stock, these dresses won’t be as unique. For some people, that isn’t a problem, but  others want to be the only one wearing a certain dress, and if you fall into the latter category, I wouldn’t recommend shopping at these stores. 

Just like Diva Dolls and W by Azwell, there are many more clothing boutiques that carry a few shorter formal-type dresses. These boutiques include: Hemline, Redbird Boutique, and D-squared. Other strictly-formal dress stores include: Angies, Glitz, David’s Bridal, and Southern Glitz. 

Online stores are getting more and more popular every day. The most popular online store to get dresses is Revolve, as they have every style of dress from thousands of brands and an incredibly wide price range. The shipping is fast and the sizing is typically accurate, so it is a very convenient site to shop from. Nordstrom, ASOS, Zara, Runaway the Label, and Lulu’s are also very popular sites with fast shipping and good prices. Lucy in the Sky and Hello Molly have cute dresses and a wide selection, but there are a lot of complaints about the sizing of the dresses being off and the items are non-refundable. Because of this, I wouldn’t recommend shopping at either one of those sites. 

We are so lucky to live in an area with so many dress stores. Whatever store you go to, you will most likely find a dress you love. And, in addition to finding the perfect dress, you are also helping fund some local businesses!