Last year, La De Da, downtown’s seller of upscale whimsy, took its fantastical window displays to a new level when employees created a party dress made completely of candy.

Which created a dilemma for owner Carole Hughes this year. How could she ever top that?

She needn’t have worried, as anyone whose taken a stroll by the store at the corner of Church and Market streets will tell you.

There, framed by a luscious garland of peppermints and snowflakes and glistening Christmas balls, is a strikingly beautiful wedding gown.

Fashioned entirely out of tens of thousands of glittering marshmallows.

Off the shoulder, tight-fitting, with a pattern of swirls and vines, it looks good enough to eat and pretty enough to wear. It is, of course, neither.

The dress is simply eye candy, created for downtown’s Dickens of a Christmas, just to draw oohs and ahhs during this most festive of seasons.

“I think Christmas is for kids,” Hughes said on a recent weekday afternoon, the store humming with holiday shoppers. “I really want to excite children when they see the window.”

Style: online formal dresses
To make this year’s magic, Hughes began brainstorming back in September. Poking around a bit online, she saw snowflakes made of marshmallows and inspiration hit. Had anyone ever fashioned a dress of sugary fluff?

Not that she could find. So Hughes went with it.

She had no idea how involved her creation would become. She and employee Robyn Gross worked weekends and late nights, building the dress behind newspaper-covered windows, right in the store.

First a frame of chicken wire gave the gown its shape. Then Hughes began hot gluing marshmallows onto mesh, starting at the dress’ elegant neckline and working down to its wide, scalloped skirt.

She began in mid-October and finished just hours before opening on Black Friday. Hughes and Gross used 41 bags of large marshmallows -- the kind you find on grocery store shelves -- and six giant bulk bags of the teeniest marshmallows you can imagine, made by Mennonites in Harrisonburg.

The dress will be in the store window through mid-January. Hughes hopes to move it to the Studios on the Square Gallery after that, and perhaps help it transform into a Valentine’s Day piece of art there.

But since the entire creation is constructed of sugar, there are no guarantees.

“It’s more of a here today, gone tomorrow kind of art piece,” Hughes said. “You’ve got to see it while you can.”

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