Wheaton help pls (Chicago, Naperville, Oak Park: rentals, car insurance, mattress)

[sleepygirlzzzz]

Hello all,

We are looking to relocate from the UK to IL in the next 2 months. I'm originally from Oak Park but have lived most of my adult life in the UK so everything from buying car insurance to renting a house will be a completely new experience for me (and my British husband).

When I was in Chicago visiting family last year, we made a shortlist of towns to visit and decided on Elmhurst. The list also included Glen Ellyn, Wheaton, La Grange and Naperville. However I have been looking at rentals the past few days and it seems that you can get more for your money in Wheaton than in Elmhurst so now we are re-considering our first choice. We actually really liked the look of Wheaton when we visited but the thing that put us off was that I had heard that it was a very conservative and religious town. Does anyone know if this is still true? Because we are not a religious family, we were afraid that we might feel out of place if this was the case.

I'd welcome any other opinions/thoughts/experiences on Wheaton. It seems to come up often in the threads as a good choice for families (we have two kids under 5) so hoping this will be a good choice.

Coming from the UK, I'm also struggling to figure out how much we can afford to pay for rent when we don't have any idea what kind of salaries we might have. A friend of mine who lives in Chicago suggested that for a 3 bed house we would be looking at approx $2000. Does this sound reasonable? I know it's hard to decide what's 'affordable' without knowing our salaries but does $2000 sounds right for a 3 bed house in the areas listed above?

Thanks for any help!! Really stressing about having to move our family abroad in less than 9 weeks time!!

[Vasily]

Wheaton College is an evangelical Protestant school, and there are a lot of churches in Wheaton. But a few years ago they allowed graduate students and faculty members to drink ... the students and faculty are mostly reasonable, it's the parents and alumni that tend to be the real hardcore fundies. However, I have seen faculty and staff get into trouble because they converted to Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy, or have been divorced. To put things into perspective, did you ever see Nightmare on Elm Street? That movie was directed by a Wheaton graduate.

The town isn't as religiously conservative as it used to be, no more so than Glen Ellyn or Elmhurst. People will leave you alone, you won't have people trying to "save" you when you go out shopping. Most of the evangelicals I've met from Wheaton are of the politically liberal Sojourners variety rather than the hardcore Jerry Falwell variety. DuPage County is in general one of the more conservative counties politically in the state, but the demographics have changed in recent years.

I've lived in Naperville for about 25 years, and strongly prefer it to Wheaton. But that's a matter of personal taste. If you rent for a year or two that will give you time to get a feeling for the area (worst case scenario, you'd need to move to a different rental). $2000 sounds like the right ballpark for a monthly house rental in these areas, though in some areas it might be hard to find a 3BR that low.

[TempesT68]

Wheaton is no doubt a very conservative/religious town, but it's nothing like say a town in the deep south where the bible is the rule of the land and pushed everywhere.

[Lookout Kid]

I just had brunch and bought a mattress in Wheaton without incident. My agnosticism was not challenged.