Thousands of prom dresses, more than 600 teenage girls and 500 volunteers -- all crammed into one abandoned elementary school.

The Glass Slipper Project organizers call this a scene of organized chaos.

To anyone else milling around the maze of chiffon and shoes with pointed toes at Sojourner Truth School, 1409 N. Ogden Ave., it seems more like complete taffeta insanity.

The organizers of the Glass Slipper Project, which provides free prom dresses, shoes, accessories and make-up to underprivileged high school juniors and seniors, estimate that they have collected nearly 7,000 dresses this year.

But it seems the project's organizers -- the modern-day fairy godmothers -- now need a fairy godmother of their own.

After eight years of providing storage space and service to the project, Midway Moving and Storage, located at 4100 West Ferdinand, cannot handle the exponential growth of the project's dress donations.

"I've held my breath thinking this time would come," said Dorian Carter, who founded the project in 1998. "As we grow, this is something we have to expect. We started out with six garment boxes and now we're [filling] two trailers."

Carter said she is negotiating a two-year contract with Midway Moving and Storage to provide the same services, but this time at a fee. For a nonprofit organization subsisting on in-kind donations of dresses and accessories and minimal monetary donations -- $50 checks here and there -- that will not be easy.

While this Saturday's dress giveaway will go ahead as scheduled even if Midway does not accept the deal, Carter fears for the project's future.

Midway has stored the dresses, received all donation shipments and transported the formal garb for laundering as well as for the annual event itself.

In fact, Carter said project organizers do not know how many dresses have been donated each year until the Midway trucks rumble into the parking lot each spring. After all, the project's Web site, www.glassslipperproject.org, asks all potential donors, who range from high school girls sending one prom dress to bridal boutiques sending thousands, to ship dresses directly to Midway.

Midway Moving and Storage President Jerry Siegel said the company has spent anywhere from $150,000 to $175,000 to help the project since 1998.

"I'd like to do it for free," Siegel said. "But at this level, there's no way that I can. It's too much for one person to do."

Siegel said he hopes the project can find grants or attract new sponsors to offset the cost, which he estimated at $42,000 this year alone.

No one expected a project that only served 20 girls in a cramped room on that first Saturday so many years ago to transform into the dreamy dress mill it is today. But when Oprah Winfrey waves her magic wand, things happen.

Her talk show featured the project on an episode that aired after the project's first disappointing day. The following Saturday Carter had to call the police for crowd control.

Today girls arrive at midnight and sleep in cars to get the first crack at dresses galore. On April 22, the first day of this year's event, Dorian said they reached their capacity of 600 eager teenage girls by 8 a.m.

Siegel said he would like to continue helping the girls, but he has yet to review the project's new proposal.

"I wouldn't have done it for eight years if I didn't believe in it," he said.

But for now, the project's organizers are not thinking of storage. On Saturdays at Sojourner Truth School, it is difficult for anyone to focus on anything other than the cute-as-cupcakes dresses. Racks upon racks of dresses.

You can almost hear the swishing of taffeta and the clinking of high heels on the untrained feet of a novice from the parking lot, filled with hundreds of girls waiting for that famed twirl in front of the mirror.

When Tianna Herron, a 17-year-old who attends Bogan High School, made that first twirl Saturday, she only let the slightest shy smile slip across her lips.

She studied the icy blue dress in the mirror. She tentatively kicked her bare feet to test the length of the dress. Earlier, as she caressed each dress on the rack, nodding in approval as her personal shopper held prospective dresses high in the air, she said she wished she weren't so tall.

When asked how many times she would try on her dress at home before the big night -- her first prom -- Herron finally allowed a full smile to wash over her face.

"Like three times a day," she answered.

After a few more twirls, Herron jumped back into a worn pair of blue jeans and joined the droves of girls outside of the room sporting jeans and t-shirts.

"These young ladies come through and they look like they've seen a lot at a young age," Carter said. "But you see that look of innocence come back when they see all these dresses and start trying them on. For a lot of these young girls, prom will be the only formal event they ever go to."