  We study properties of two-leg Heisenberg spin ladders in a mean-field
approximation using a variety of angular-momentum coupled bases. The mean-field
theory proposed by Gopalan, Rice, and Sigrist, which uses a rung basis, assumes
that the mean-field ground state consists of a condensate of spin-singlets
along the rungs of the ladder. We generalize this approach to larger
angular-momentum coupled bases which incorporate---by their mere definition---a
substantial fraction of the important short-range structure of these materials.
In these bases the mean-field ground-state remains a condensate of spin
singlet---but now with each involving a larger fraction of the spins in the
ladder. As expected, the ``purity'' of the ground-state, as judged by the
condensate fraction, increases with the size of the elementary block defining
the basis. Moreover, the coupling to quasiparticle excitations becomes weaker
as the size of the elementary block increases. Thus, the weak-coupling limit of
the theory becomes an accurate representation of the underlying mean-field
dynamics. We illustrate the method by computing static and dynamic properties
of two-leg ladders in the various angular-momentum coupled bases.
