I would suggest a place called Celebrity Kids. Even though the name implies �Kid� photography, they do family portraiture and all sorts of stuff. They are located in Algonquin, Geneva, and Wheaton.
I highly recommend them! First and foremost, their work is phenomenal; easily comparable with private studios, in quality, creativity, and capability, but not in pricing. Their packages are pretty flexible, and priced reasonably. They are much less than a private studio, but of course more than a franchise studio such as Sears. An actual example would be with Lanza Portraits, in Bloomingdale (a private studio), our average package was about $1200, but at Celebrity Kids we average about $400 � but then again, we tend to go overboard when it comes to pictures of our girls.
Sears is my second recommendation, as they have recently upgraded all their equipment in all their studios, and they are fair priced with good quality work. The pricing is much less than Celebrity Kids too.
With all that said: if you go the Celebrity Kids route, I suggest visiting the Radio Shopping Show [http://radioshoppingshow.com] or listening to it, as you can purchase gift certificates there at an extremely low rate. I forget now, but the certificate was something like an $80 certificate for $10 or something like that. I was skeptical at first, but the certificate was the real deal, and was actually worth the claim.
As a side note. Take a look at the radio shopping show for a bunch of other really, I mean really, low priced certificates and vouchers. I was at first very skeptical, but I�ve literally made dozens of purchase over the past two years and never been disappointed.
-K.