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Raucous ferris-wheel wedding awakens residents’ ire in Surrey

RCMP says city bylaws officers will be paying newlyweds a visit today
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Surrey wedding, complete with full-sized ferris wheel, kept a lot of residents up last night. (Facebook image)

There are plenty of bleary-eyed Surrey residents today after the RCMP was bombarded with complaint calls overnight about a huge wedding celebration that roared on into the wee hours of the morning.

The wedding of Punjabi singer-actor Parmish Verma and Geet Grewal, Liberal MP candidate for Mission-Matsqui-Fraser Canyon in the last federal election, featured a full-on ferris wheel and a concert-worthy sound system that blasted bhangra beats that could be heard as far as 15 blocks away, past 2 a.m.

Ironically, a story published in the Times of India reports that “though Parmish and Geet are keeping their celebrations as low-key events only with close friends and family around, they are making sure to share some pictures from their special days as a treat for their followers on social media.”

Surrey RCMP Const. Sarbjit Sangha told the Now-Leader that city bylaws officers will be paying the newlyweds a visit today.

“The music was so loud, people were complaining, we had a lot of calls last night and I think bylaws are going to their residence today to issue them a whole bunch of fines,” she said.

A chopper was also heard flying overhead after the music died down.

“It might have been another news chopper,” Sangha said, “I don’t know if our Air 1 was up last night.”

CLICK HERE for more reactions and viewpoints from neighbours.

Bylaws and Mounties were on scene last night responding not only to noise complaints but complaints about vehicles being parked on the street, she added.

“A few vehicles were towed from the street as well.”

Sangha said the bylaws enforcement department is taking the lead on this.

“We’re letting bylaws deal with it and we’re supporting them, we are there with them, if they need assistance we will be there but bylaws is going to take the lead on this because it is more to do with other people’s enjoyment of the property and noise complaints are usually dealt with with the fines,” she said. “I know they are going to issue fines to the homeowners.”

As for the COVID-19 aspect, Cpl. Vanessa Munn told the Now-Leader recently that some Mounties on the COVID-19 Compliance and Enforcement Team (CCET) have gone back to their pre-pandemic duties.

“As they’re needed we can basically draw from that pool of people again,” she said. “There’s not much to enforce at this point.”

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Sangha said Wednesday that there are still Mounties on that team but “we will deploy them only if necessary.

“This has nothing to do with COVID so far, it’s just noise complaints that we’ve been dealing with,” she said. “We had a lot of calls for noise complaints but nobody said anything about how many people were inside. I think it wasn’t the people, it was the noise of the people that was the issue.”

Police received as many as 40 noise complaints related to the wedding celebration, which was held in Surrey’s Clayton Heights neighbourhood, in the area of 192 Street and about 78 Avenue.

“That’s excessive, and that’s why our members attended with bylaws and bylaws said they’d go in the morning, I think they didn’t want to deal with it last night.”

She said it was apparently difficult to contact the homeowners at that time.

“Other people still have to go to work, they’ve got to get up in the morning, so they need their sleep. And people have small children, they need to go to sleep, and so this is very inconsiderate of these people.”

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tom.zytaruk@surreynowleader.com

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About the Author: Tom Zytaruk

I write unvarnished opinion columns and unbiased news reports for the Surrey Now-Leader.
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