The wedding of a prominent venture capitalist and a former beauty queen turned tech executive left a natural landmark in Utah trashed and degraded, local officials said.
Andrew Chen and Emma Waldron tied the knot at Castleton Tower over Labor Day Weekend in September in a controversial ceremony that has left locals furious at their actions.
Waldron won the Miss Ireland competition in 2010, and has since pursued a career in Silicon Valley. She is the current founder of Spuddie, a company developing an AI companion, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Chen is a partner at Andreesen Horowitz, where he invests in ‘games, AR/VR, metaverse, and consumer tech startups,’ according to his website.
Castleton Tower is a 400-foot tall sandstone tower that juts out above a 1,000-foot high peak near the town of Castle Valley, Utah.
The US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) calls the landmark ‘probably the most famous desert tower in the world.’
In a since-deleted Tweet, Waldron called Castleton Tower the couple’s ‘favorite place in the world.’
Chen and Waldron applied to host their event at the site, which they said would consist of a ‘simple wedding ceremony with one small white tent,’ according to a document obtained by the Moab Times-Independent.
The request reportedly said that only 12 guests would attend the ceremony, no outside businesses would be contracted, all music would be non-amplified, and the only structure set up was a ‘small shade tent.’
But the morning after the wedding, Castle Valley City Councilmember Pamela Gibson discovered a massive mess indicative of a much larger celebration.
Gibson took photos of ripped-open trash bags, discarded glass bottles, abandoned furniture, and a latrine facility. Animals appeared to have scavenged through the remains of the site.
‘I was shaking I was so mad,’ Gibson told the Times-Independent.
The mess was reportedly hauled off by the next Wednesday, but the truck used for the operation was too big for the road and left massive tire prints in the soil.
‘That huge truck was just too wide for the road so it was squashing all the vegetation,’ Gibson told the local paper.
The City Council discussed the event at a meeting on September 20, where they forwarded a letter to the BLM asking to ban all future wedding receptions at Castleton Tower, lest they turn into another ‘Waldron/Chen extravaganza.’
The letter also accuses the couple of using a generator at the site, hiring a catering company, and erecting a 24-foot tall cabana instead of the ‘shade tent’ they were given permission to use.
Chen and Waldron initially documented their nuptials on social media, but have since deleted most photos and videos showing the size of the gathering.
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