Madison Sloane Brown, a senior talent manager at The Wall Group, and Andrew Grant Cowherd, a brand manager at Sabra Dipping Company, met in a crowded bar in Soho. “My childhood friend was dating a friend of Grant’s at the time, and he saw me and asked her if he could speak to me. She said yes and introduced us. He didn’t have much to say at the time—I think he was a bit intoxicated—but managed to get my phone number,” Madison says. The fall after their first date, Grant started business school in Michigan, and the two dated long-distance, until he moved back to the city after graduation. Three years after they first started dating, he proposed during a winter stroll in Central Park.
From the start, Madison knew she wanted to get ready in the house she grew up in in Villanova. “We picked the date of December 8th, which is a sentimental date for both of our families. It’s Grant’s father’s birthday and my late grandfather’s birthday,” the bride explains. For the reception, the couple chose the sophisticated Merion Golf Club, and to help plan everything, they hired Lisa Marie Chimento of Kaleidoscope Solutions.
In the bride’s opinion, the more tulle, the better when it comes to a wedding gown, and she found her one-shoulder look quickly at Vera Wang. With styling guidance from Elle Strauss, she decided to accompany the dress with her mother’s diamond stud earrings, her late great aunt’s diamond tennis bracelet, and her grandmother’s coat. Makeup artist extraordinaire Ana Marie Rizzieri offered to do the bride’s beauty look. “Ana Marie is incredibly talented and made me feel so beautiful,” Madison says. “She is also so hilarious which helped calm down any wedding day nerves.”
Before the ceremony, the couple decided to do their first look just down the street from the bride’s childhood home, at Ardrossan Estate, which is the estate where the film The Philadelphia Story, starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, is based off of. “My mother and I have always been fascinated with the estate and the history of the Montgomery Scott family,” the bride explains. “Over the summer, my mother serendipitously ran into one of the family members, who in conversation, graciously offered the estate for our first look photos.”
In a sunset church ceremony at St. David’s Episcopal Church in Wayne, Pennsylvania, Madison walked with her father down the aisle to meet Grant at the altar. “When I saw Madison before she started walking towards me, I felt an intense rush of emotions—I was nervous, excited, and extremely happy all at once,” the groom says. “I definitely almost started to tear up, and it did not help that I noticed my mom, who was sitting in the front row, and my sister, who was by my side, both starting to cry.”
After the first kiss, everyone went to the club for cocktail hour. There, mini Philly cheesesteaks were served. Then guests found their seats at tables decorated with camellia, silver dollar eucalyptus, tulips, peonies, calla lilies, and pink, red, and white roses by Nancy Saam Flowers.
Once dinner concluded, their ten-piece band, Jump Street Band, kicked things off on the dance floor. The newlyweds had their first dance to “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” by Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, and then the party continued. “Towards the end of the night, our fathers got up on chairs to dance . . . until the club manager had to tell them to get down,” Madison says. “They may have had an even better night than we did!”
