Newlyweds' car is towed by Boston's parking cops

By Matt Rocheleau, Town Correspondent

If Boston’s parking enforcement officials have a soft spot for any types of drivers, newlyweds don’t appear to be among them.

South End resident Belinda Borrelli reports that on Monday morning, just hours after she and her husband Steven Riesinger returned from their out-of-town weekend wedding, their car was ticketed and subsequently towed from Shawmut Avenue so street-sweeping crews could clean their South End street.

Borrelli, who has lived nearby where the car was towed from for seven years, says the couple’s parking violation was accidental. She was surprised that, within a half-hour of when street sweeping rules began at 8 a.m., her car, decked out with white ribbons and bows and “Just Married!” written across the back window, didn’t receive any breaks.

“We were exhausted. I think we lost track and we thought the street cleaning was from 12 to [4 p.m.],” she said by phone this week. “We parked on the wrong side.”

Still, “It was pretty mean of them,” Borrelli said. “It was definitely an unanticipated cost. You feel like you’re just writing checks left and right for the wedding and now the City of Boston wants to get in on the action, too, apparently.”

When she picked the car up from a tow lot in Dorchester, a bright-orange envelope with a $40 bill from the city was tucked under the front windshield wiper. The tow company showed her no sympathy either. They charged the couple $137. The newlyweds paid another $10 on a cab ride to the tow lot.

The day they were leaving the city for their wedding in Providence and a reception in Newport, R.I., they double-parked with its warning flashers on momentarily so Borrelli could load her wedding dress into the car, she said.

“We were only gone literally two minutes,” which she discovered was plenty of time for a $40 parking fine to be issued.

They said between the two of them, they had only ever been ticketed or towed in Boston once before.

“I’ve heard that Boston was voted the meanest city in the country,” Borrelli said, adding optimistically, “We’re hoping that the City of Boston will show us some love.”

A spokeswoman at the city's transportation department could not be reached today for comment.