Around 60 students turned up, along with a number of mums.
"This year we started the event at 4pm so students could come straight from school which turned out to be a great idea, and by 3.15pm we had students queuing up at the door.
"It certainly went off with a whiz and a bang," she said.
"Around 40 students walked away with dresses to wear and many will come back after taking a look."
Last year Birthright Kāpiti started collecting donations of ball dresses to create an event where students could come and find a dress, suit, shoes and bags - all for free.
Now they've had the official event, the dresses will be available for students to come look at any time during shop hours until the end of July.
This year all the dresses are set up upstairs so the students can come and try them on by themselves or with a small group of friends, co-organiser Louise Isaacs said.
"Some will prefer this than the mayhem of everyone scrambling as they did on Thursday night," Louise said.
"It's a nice calm environment where people can go up with their girlfriends and try them on with all the mirrors."
No two dresses are the same, with many sizes and styles available.
There are also a number of suits and shirts available for the guys to hire, with Birthright seeking more shirt donations.
"We still want to do a big push for suits and dress shirts as we need more shirts for the guys this year and for the years to come.
"The suit, the shirt, the shoes, the tie, the corsage - no matter what you're wearing it's just as expensive for the boys as it is for the girls."
All the dresses are donated specifically for ball dress hire with students returning them afterwards and kept for next year.
"We had more people come through this year, and we hope it will build as the year goes by - everything will stay set up until the end of July," Amanda said.
"We want this to be the first port of call for students when they are getting ready for their ball because it saves a huge amount of money.
"Some girls came in just to get an idea of what colours and styles suit them which we also like," she said.
"As one of the girls said last night, you never get to go anywhere where there are this many ball dresses as an option. It's a really good starting point."
Putting the event together involved many volunteers from Birthright and a couple of 14-hour days from Amanda and Louise.
"We've been taking donations all year, and next year we will give ourselves more time to steam all the dresses.
"We've had so many volunteers who have come in outside of their normal volunteer hours to help steam dresses and clean the store.
"We do this so that people can have a choice," Amanda said.
"It was just so lovely to see the girls' faces when trying them on - and the relief on the mums' faces was quite priceless.
"You could see that there was stress - it is stressful for parents.
"A lot of them were so grateful, so thankful that they walked out of here and their daughter's dress is sorted."
Louise said: "You knew when a girl had a dress on that she liked because she would come out and do a bit of a jiggle and a twirl.
"They had fun, they giggled, and it was a fun and safe environment."
