The Grooms Wore Custom Jumpsuits—And an Unexpected Something Blue—At this Intimate Brooklyn Wedding

That weekend, New York experienced a deluge of “end-of-the-world rain,” William remembers. “It flooded torrentially on Friday, and rained all day on Saturday, but somehow everything faded off and we woke up Sunday morning to one of the most beautiful days ever.” Eschewing a first look, the couple walked side-by-side under clear blue skies to the Wythe, where they got ready together. “It’s so ‘us’ to play dress up,” William says. “I wanted to be there and help each other,” Ryan adds, including being the one to lace up William’s corset: “He couldn’t do that by himself.”

The hairstylist entrusted his hair to Jacob Rozenberg, a close friend whose client list includes Irina Shayk and Karlie Kloss. “I had a couple of Austin Butler references,” Ryan laughs.

William and Ryan didn’t want to walk separately down the aisle —“or really have an aisle at all,” William says—so they headed into the ceremony together while a quartet played “Unchained Melody.” Florist Emily Thompson, whose work they admired from fashion shows like Jason Wu and Ulla Johnson, surrounded the terrace with autumn-toned chrysanthemums, bluebells, and dahlias. “I took inspiration from old oil paintings of floral arrangements,” Ryan says. The couple did not have a wedding party, and William made a joking addendum to their formal dress code: “No khakis within 50 feet of the building.” One of William’s oldest family friends ordained their marriage, and they wrote their own vows, with William movingly calling Ryan “human sunshine.”

“My hair school teacher would always call me Sunshine,” Ryan says, “so the fact that he said that to me… I was like, ‘You’re my person.’

The party in the Main Hall began under a cluster of disco balls, with tables adorned with pomegranates and pears. After their first dance—an encore of “Unchained Melody”—the grooms slipped out to change into their second looks: two more custom Stautberg jumpsuits painstakingly designed by William. “I knew that the wedding wouldn’t be complete without some very bold tailoring,” he says.

For William’s double-breasted jumpsuit, “my biggest inspiration was Tommy Nutter, a queer tailor on Savile Row in the late sixties,” he says—specifically “a photo of Ringo Starr wearing one of his suits with very strong, structured shoulders.” After exhaustive research, William met with the English fabric mill Fox & Brothers, a purveyor of wool flannel since 1772. “They humbly went through the assortment, narrating, ‘This was Sir Winston Churchill’s favorite fabric,’ or ‘We developed this fabric for the Duke of Windsor,’ and I was sold,” William says. He opted for a navy and cream Prince of Wales glenplaid: “The first time I saw myself in the mirror I became emotional with just how much I could see the original reference.”