Ashley Taylor Jeffress, a program manager at HubSpot, and Adam Kimball Ladd met on Hinge. “It was a chilly Boston night in November, and after long conversations about New England sports teams and Beyoncé’s empire, the bartender kindly asked us to leave as the bar was getting ready to close,” Ashley says. Two years later, he taught her how to golf, bought her her first set of clubs, and watched her have “full-blown meltdowns on the course.” Then, three-and-a-half years after meeting, he proposed on the first hole of their golf club.
The couple wanted their wedding to reflect them both, so they decided to chose a destination they loved but one that had no particular significance to either of them. “Our relationship has always been about creating new traditions, and our wedding was no exception,” Ashley says. They decided on Sonoma, and found Beltane Ranch on a total fluke and booked it blind! To help put everything together, Ashley hired her friend Christina Padavano of Pinch Me Planning.
When the bride started looking for her dress, she had no idea what she wanted. After finding options in Boston, she and her mom decided on a whim to look around her home state of Connecticut when she was home one weekend. At A Little Something White in Darien, Ashley fell in love with Suzanne Neville’s gowns and decided on her Pandora dress that same day.
Her bridesmaids wore dresses they picked themselves with only a little direction regarding the color palette. Ashley worked with her maid of honor, Bea, to find her dress though. “We both fell in love with this gorgeous navy silk-draped Zimmerman dress,” she says.
On the big #AshleyFoundHerLadd wedding day, their 55 guests were escorted through the garden and took their seats under the shade of a California oak tree. To an acoustic version of Beyoncé’s “XO,” Ashley and her mom, Jacquie, walked down the aisle. “This was a big moment for us, as I am her only child,” the bride explains. Joan, a family friend and minister who’s known Ashley since she was three years old, officiated the ceremony. And the sisters of the bride and groom gave readings—Ashley’s sister, Keishaana, read “Touched by an Angel” by Maya Angelou and Adam’s sister, Lindsay, read Carrie’s poem from Sex and the City.
During the service, with perfect, clear California weather, a huge gust of wind blew the bride’s veil straight into the air, and everyone found it hilarious. “Adam and I attributed the large gust and large laughs to Adam’s best friend, Noah, who passed away in 2009,” Ashley says. “He loved making people laugh and this was no exception; we could feel his presence with us, and it was an indescribable feeling.”
After Joan pronounced the two as husband and wife, they recessed to Cheryl Lynn’s “Got To Be Real” and led everyone into a cocktail hour. Then, guests took their seats for a delicious farm-to-table meal. Instead of a wedding cake, the couple wanted a crisp and crumble bar with ranch blueberry pie, apple and pear crisp, peach cobbler, butternut squash pie, banana cream pie, and vanilla bean ice cream.
They opened the dance floor with “California Love” by 2Pac featuring Dr. Dre, which got everybody up and moving—and for their first dance, they swayed to “The Man in Me” by Bob Dylan, picked out by the groom.
Once the reception came to a close, Adam and his friends played a round of horseshoes, while the girls grabbed a couple more bottles of wine and lounged around the fire pit—a relaxing way to end a beautiful day under a clear night sky.
