N.L. prom shoppers travel to Sydney, N.S., to find their dresses

When Port aux Basques, N.L., high school student Toni Bobbett heads to her prom in three weeks, she will showing off her special designer dress — one that took a 178-kilometre ferry ride to find.

Not every girl will travel seven hours by Marine Atlantic from Newfoundland to Sydney, N.S., to find the perfect gown. But it was worth it when she put on an $800 Ellie Wilde navy sparkle dress that blends to a soft pink with a sweeping train.

"My mom just looked and was like, 'Wow,' and at the same time I just said, 'I have to get this one,'" said Bobbett. "It's just something that clicks in your head, I guess, and you know it's the right one."

Bobbett was one of 12 girls from Newfoundland who last November decided to make the trip to Timeless Moments, a bridal and gown store in downtown Sydney. At least five of them were from Bobbett's school, St. James Regional High.

'I knew I was going to find my dress'

There proved to be so much business from Newfoundland that store owner Brittany Woodworth said dress orders doubled from the same month the year before, and staff had to keep a special list to keep track of which gown was going where.

Prom dress shopping usually starts early in the year, and for Bobbett it began in August. But the search proved fruitless until her mother, Wanda Rossiter, saw a video on Facebook.

The video was about Timeless Moment's event called Promvember. It's an event in November where designers give the store a trunk show ranging from 35 to 50 dresses. A trunk show is when a company sends a collection of dresses to a store on loan for customers to try on and order in.

"Mom pretty much had convinced me first, because when she saw the video she said, 'Oh my gosh we have to go there,'" said Bobbett. "Places we went to before, we really didn't see anything and when we went over there, I knew I was going to find my dress there."

Third time's a charm

And she did. She ordered her Ellie Wilde dress and left on the Marine Atlantic ferry to go back home.

There was one slight hiccup: A few weeks later, the dress arrived and Bobbett tried it on. The gown was too short. Bobbett sent it back for a longer one, but when the second dress arrived it was still too short.

"So [Timeless Moments] called with the bad news and I was upset because I didn't know what I was going to do," said Bobbett. "But then they said they have a dress in the back, same one as mine, but it was two sizes bigger, but also longer. They said they would give me that dress and pay for the alterations."

This was the first year Timeless Moments held an event like Promvember. There had been one or two girls from Newfoundland shopping at the store before, Woodworth said, but nothing like the numbers that arrived this school year.

The store keeps track of which dresses will be at local schools. But this year the store had to start keeping track of which dresses were going to be at certain schools in Newfoundland.

"It wasn't as casual as like, 'Oh, you're from Newfoundland, you can get any dress you want.' We were like, 'Oh, you're from St. James,' and have to check the list to make sure they weren't getting the same dress as someone else," said Woodworth.