Devon Trip

Devon = a street on the northside of Chicago, populated with shops and stores that serve a predominantly Indian community.  This means that if you need Indian clothing for your sister's upcoming wedding, Devon Street is where you have to go. 
As, my sister, Debby's wedding will be a mix of American and Indian traditions, we decided to have my girls wear traditional Indian lenghas to her wedding.  No problem, except the actual finding and purchasing of said clothes.  It's not like you can walk into Macy's and buy a couple lenghas off the rack.  Also, because of the possibility that the lenghas would need alterations, it wasn't something that we could put off until we got to California and Debby could help us. 

SOOO what I am to do:

1- Be thankful that you live in a big enough city that it has it's own "Little India"  At least there are shops I can go to in order to find the right clothing.

2- Call the parents of your kid's friends who are from India and ask them for help.  This is where I really got lucky.  A neighbor and friend of ours, who has a daughter Paige's age, agreed to help me.  Not only did she give me advice and tell me where to go, she also insisted that she come with me.  I should have known what I was in for when she told me, "you can't go to Devon Street by yourself, I need to go with you."

3- Plan a shopping trip to Chicago and in hindsight prepare for it to be an ALL day and evening affair!

Okay so here is a quick summary of our shopping excursion:

By some miracle, I was able to stick to my budget.  Let's just say that the tags on the dresses listed a price of $600.00 each!  Seriously, $600 for a child's dress??!!  Who would pay that?  Of course, the whole point is that no one would pay that.  That is why you have to haggle.  I admit right now I am not good at this.  Funny thing is my sister Debby, told me right before I went to always offer less than 1/2 of what the price tag says and she was right.  Time and again, the first offer from the shopkeeper was "a good deal" at $250.

Still $250 for a dress?  This is why I had my friend, whose name is Gunjan by the way, with me.  I pretty much just let her take over everything.  Thank goodness!  First off, she was able to tell me what was good quality and what wasn't.  She also gave me advice on what would be appropriate attire for a wedding and what wouldn't be.  Of course, we weren't shopping for a wedding, wink, wink.  We told the shopkeepers were shopping for a graduation party, because if you say "wedding" you are automatically going to pay double.  Good to know.

Anyways, after going to multiple shops and the girls trying on what seemed like 50 different lenghas we had the ones we wanted and they didn't even need alterations.  Now it was time to negotiate the price.  All I can say about this experience is that I was a silent bystander.  The negotiations were not in English.  There was much clikcing of tongues and shaking of heads.  At some point, I'm pretty sure that the sales ladies were MAD at us, but Gunjan did it.  I got both dresses for the price I wanted!

I will say that if it were up to me, I would have agreed to a much higher price.  I really was scared of those Indian ladies.  By the end, I was like, "give me the dresses, here's your money and let me out of here!"  

Honestly, I really can't see myself shopping on Devon Street too often, but it was definitely an experience to remember and of course we did get some yummy Indian food out of it.  We ate at a restaurant featuring Southern Indian, vegetarian cuisine.  We basically got these huge crepes, I mean huge crepes, that are filled with potatoes and onions and then you dip them in all these yummy sauces.

The crepes hanging off are plates are folded in half

And I hate to jump the gun posting pictures of the girls in their dresses before the wedding, but how can I not include pictures of the whole point of this post?  So here's a little preview: