What it’s actually like
The arts district is not where most people expect to find a wedding dress, which is part of the charm of Schaffer’s Bridal. The store sits on Marshall Way at Main Street, a door from the galleries, and inside it is all business of a different kind: racks of white, fitting rooms built for a bride and her people, and consultants who run back-to-back appointments through the season. Schaffer’s says it carries more than 400 wedding gowns, many from designer partnerships it describes as exclusive, along with little white dresses for showers and rehearsals, veils and accessories.
It is a family business with an Iowa accent. Schaffer’s started in Des Moines about sixty years ago, built its name in the Midwest, and expanded to Scottsdale in 2011; the Iowa store is now in West Des Moines. The Scottsdale shop brings the Midwestern bridal-house model to a resort city with a big wedding trade: a deep inventory, a set process, and a staff that has done this thousands of times.
The process is the product. Appointments are ninety minutes, the room fits the bride plus four guests, food and drinks stay outside, and the consultant pulls dresses to your brief. Designer gowns run from roughly $1,000 to $6,000. When you say yes, they measure you, order the size the designer’s chart calls for, and send you to alterations when it arrives.
What to buy
The gown. The reason to book. Come with a budget and two or three pictures, and let the consultant edit the 400 down to the eight worth trying.
A little white dress. For the shower, the rehearsal dinner or the courthouse, and the purchase that does not need a ten-month lead time.
The veil and accessories. Easier to choose in the same appointment with the gown on, which is why the store stocks them.
Time. The thing most brides run short of. Order ten to fifteen months out.
Parking, timing and the practical stuff
Schaffer’s is at 3944 North Marshall Way, at the Main Street corner of the Main Street Arts District. The store itself tells brides to leave time for street parking or the public garage near Main Street and First Street, and to arrive no more than five minutes early, because appointments run back to back. Arrive ten minutes late without calling and the slot can go to a walk-in. The Old Town on foot note covers the downtown grid.
The posted hours are Monday, Wednesday and Thursday ten to six, Friday and Saturday ten to five, Sunday ten to three, and closed Tuesday. Saturdays book first. The timeline matters more than the day: gowns take five to seven months to arrive and alterations take two to four, which is why the store recommends buying ten to fifteen months out. A 75 percent deposit places the order, the balance is due at pickup, and there are no returns or exchanges, so make the decision in the room, not in the car. For pickups and viewing appointments, call rather than booking online.
Thursday evenings bring the Scottsdale ArtWalk to the street outside, which makes a late-afternoon Thursday appointment a good excuse for a celebratory walk afterward.
Eat while you’re there
The celebration lunch is at Arcadia Farms Café on First Avenue, the daytime café in a vintage house since 1990. Malee’s Thai Bistro on Main Street has fed the district since 1987. For a toast, Sel on Main is the prix-fixe dinner, and the Sugar Bowl at Scottsdale Road and First Avenue is the sundae.
How it got here
Marshall Way grew up as a gallery street. Named for Woodrow Wilson’s vice president, Thomas R. Marshall, who wintered in Scottsdale, it filled with galleries from the 1960s as the arts colony around Main Street and Fifth Avenue spilled around the corner, and in 1975 its dealers joined Main Street’s in the Thursday ArtWalk. Over the decades the street added design houses like Wiseman & Gale Interiors, jewelers and specialty shops, so that by the 2010s the arts district was as much a district of fine retail as of galleries.
Schaffer’s arrived in that mix in 2011, expanding beyond Iowa for a bridal business that, by its own count, had already been fitting brides for close to half a century. The Arizona store put a full Midwestern-style bridal house, with hundreds of gowns on the floor, in the middle of a downtown better known for bronzes and turquoise.
Fifteen years on, it is still there. Schaffer’s is listed among the fashion and luxury boutiques of the Scottsdale Arts District, alongside neighbors on the same corner such as Saddlebags, and it remains one of the few places in Old Town where the shopping is planned a year ahead rather than on impulse. Brides who come for a dress tend to leave with a walk past the galleries and a lunch, which is about as good an advertisement for the district as any.