Candy joins commerce during fest in downtown Glen Ellyn
It's not every day a mom in downtown Glen Ellyn can say to her costumed kid, "OK, let's go into the cheese shop first and say, 'Trick-or-Treat!'"
But that's exactly what Saturday was for as the Glen Ellyn Chamber of Commerce hosted its annual Halloween Festival & Parade, making the exchange of candy an acceptable form of commerce.
More than 500 kids and parents marched in a four-block parade stepping off just before 10 a.m., bringing crowds of Pokemon, Power Rangers, race car drivers, Sesame Street characters, princesses, dinosaurs, superheroes and unicorns onto Main Street to explore and enjoy.
Blocked off to traffic for several hours, the street hosted business booths with Halloween-themed games, murals to paint and candy to grab. And the businesses actually on Main Street - Bike Hub, Banyan Tree Mall, Marcel's, Paul's Shoe Service, Norabella Boutique and String Theory yarn, among them - welcomed visitors in for treats and activities.
The Wagnaar family of Glen Ellyn makes the parade a tradition exactly because of the candy, dad Matt said Saturday, as he and his wife Galen brought their kids Danny, 9, and Natalie, 7, to join the fun.
Danny said he hoped to be a zombie hunter this year, but ended up dressed as a grim reaper, wielding a scythe nearly taller then he was; while Natalie donned purple hair to take on the look of the character Mal from her favorite movies, "Descendants" and "Descendants 2."
Before finding free hot dogs outside of a real estate office or candy at the volunteer fire station, parade participants followed the dressed-up drum line from Glenbard West High School, which tapped out cadences while costumed as Waldo, Luigi, a dinosaur and a banana - for a few wacky examples.
Calla Mikolajczyk, 16, gave the perfect introduction to get into the Halloween spirit.
"I'm Glinda, the Good Witch, and this is my Cowardly Lion little brother," she said, describing the sparkly pink hoop skirt costume she made for a school play and 4-year-old Cyrus Mikolajczyk's lion suit made by their grandmother.
Joining the parade with such well-paired costumes seemed a fun way to celebrate, Calla said.
The chamber expected at lest 2,500 people to visit the festival.