A Riverview, N.B., woman who provides free dresses to teens in need is searching for a new location after losing the one she was able to use for free for the past six years.
Lara Lavoie founded PromPretty in 2018, after seeing social media posts about similar initiatives in the United States.
Prom can be an expensive rite of passage that not every family can afford.
“Dresses are very expensive. It can run up to around $1,000,” Lavoie said on Monday.
Lavoie previously operated PromPretty out of the Chocolate River Station in Riverview, where teens could set up an appointment and choose a free dress in a boutique-like environment.
The building has sold to new owners who need to rent out that space.
“I’m not taking appointments this year because I don’t have a location,” Lavoie said.
In a typical year, Lavoie said that between 100 to 150 students would set up appointments to choose a dress.
This year, most of the dresses are stored in a storage space at Riverview High.
“I just have a storage space and then I take (the dresses) into the schools when they contact me,” she said.
She said so far, four schools have contacted her to bring in dresses for soon-t0-be grads in need.
Transporting them is no easy task.
“I have to bring a variety of sizes and a variety of styles so even if it’s one girl I have to bring 20 dresses,” she said.
She has to bring the dresses down two flights of stairs from the storage space.
She said so far this year, she has given dresses to roughly 30 students, a number she expects would be much higher if she had a private space to make the students more comfortable.
“I feel sad, I want to be able to help afford any student that can’t afford a prom dress,” she said.
Lavoie is searching high and low for a free space, or one that her modest budget of roughly $100 to $200 a month could accommodate.
She runs the program in her spare time, and would prefer to find a location near her home in Riverview.
That’s proving to be difficult.
“We’ve reached out to spaces…we thought we had a good lead on one but it didn’t work out,” she said.
Lavoie isn’t giving up anytime soon.
She says her clients are always grateful for the experience.
“They’re always very happy to be having that experience I think and getting to try on lots of sizes and styles,” she said.
She’s hoping to find a space before the end of the school year.