It took nearly 10 minutes to put on the dress.
At the back of Seymour’s only quinceañera boutique, Nadia Herrera laces the purple ribbons up the corset. She leans sideways to avoid stepping on the sparkling floral train.
“Hermosa,” Herrera tells the girl in the dress. “Do you want to put down your hair a bit?”
The 15-year-old girl undoes her long black braid, letting it cascade over the dress’s gauzy sleeves. Herrera chooses a dainty silver crown from a nearby shelf and sets it on top of the girl’s head, tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear.
“Lift your face, my love,” she says in Spanish.
Herrera fluffs out the skirt and helps the girl step in front of a mirror in the corner of the shop next to the pink neon sign that reads “Hello, Gorgeous.”
Herrera moved to Seymour in 2011 from Veracruz, Mexico, after her husband found a job at an auto company. She started choreographing quinceañera dances shortly after.
A quinceañera, which marks a girl’s passage to womanhood on her 15th birthday and can also refer to the girl herself, is celebrated across Latin America. It typically involves a Catholic Mass followed by a party, with the birthday girl performing several dances with her father and her court of damas and chambelanes — a group of male and female friends that accompany the quinceañera.
Herrera studied dance at an academy in Mexico when she was younger and, from there, transitioned to folkloric dance. It takes about three months for Herrera to choreograph and prepare four or five dances with the girl and her court.
Quinceañera dresses are shown inside of Nadia Herrera's boutique March 25, 2026, in Seymour, Indiana. Herrera moved to Seymour from Mexico in 2011.
Her favorite memories from her work are watching the quinceañera and her court together, seeing their celebrations, laughs and nervousness.
She also started working as a master of ceremonies for the parties, making sure the quinceañera and her family has time to enjoy the party. A quinceañera party can cost thousands of dollars between catering, venue rental, the dress and decorations. As master of ceremonies, Herrera also connects families with vendors.
Herrera stopped choreographing in 2019 and decided to open her dress shop — NH by Nadia Herrera — in May 2024. She said she likes fancy things. Rhinestones are her favorite.
“When they are changing in the fitting room and when, and they go out and the first time they see it in the mirror,” Herrera said. “It’s something that you can see in the faces, that they are so proud and they are so happy to see what they are seeing.”
She imports the dresses from a couple suppliers in Mexico and one from the United States. She sells at least one dress a month — more during warmer months, which is the bigger quinceañera season.
She loves to help people feel secure and shine. When you’re fifteen, she said, you’re beautiful and that’s it.
While now she’s settled with her boutique, it wasn’t always easy for her to transition to life in the United States.
Learning things like how to pay her Duke Energy bill, going to the doctor or communicating with her childrens’ teachers and counselors proved a challenge. Even after living in Seymour for 15 years, she tries to learn a word every day. Today’s was “slightly."
But here, in her little boutique tucked in the corner of a shopping center, she doesn’t need to use it.
On a sunny Wednesday in March, a family walks into the shop. They drove from Indianapolis to come here. Herrera greets them in Spanish and guides the girl and her mother through the colorful racks.
“Do you have any color preference?” she asks.
Nadia Herrera arranges a dress on the racks of her boutique March 25, 2026, in Seymour, Indiana. Herrera imported the dresses from Mexico and Florida.
Anything but pink, the girl responds. The girl’s mom points out a couple of dresses she thinks are too dark. Herrera shows the pair some gowns she thinks are more traditional, some that are more elegant.
The sparkly lilac one gets whisked into the dressing room with the quinceañera, while Herrera struggles to reach the hook as she hangs other dresses outside. They’re all taller than she is, with bulging hoop skirts and yards of tulle.
When Herrera’s not at the shop or dancing with her folkloric dance group, she works as a community health worker for the Seymour branch of Su Casa, which was founded to help Latin American immigrants and Latinos adapt to life in the United States and help them get access to essential services.
She started working at Su Casa in 2022 after it helped her with questions she had about the education system when she moved to Seymour. She calls it her “dream job."
“If something happened, you don’t know sometimes to whom you can ask or where you need to go,” Herrera said. “And for that reason, I like Su Casa.”
Back at the boutique, Herrera helps pick up the girl’s endless skirts so she can see the dress from all angles. Smiles light both their faces.
That’s the one.
Natalia Nelson covers immigration issues in southern Indiana. Her work is supported by a rural reporting grant from the Hearst Foundation.
