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

Though Ryan and William consistently questioned wedding conventions, they honored at least one custom. For “something old,” Ryan ordered vintage Chanel pearl cufflinks from the RealReal. William’s designs checked the “something new” box, while his grandmother’s emerald-and-diamond ring, a family heirloom, served as “something borrowed.” “I finally got the courage to ask her a few months before the wedding, and she was more than excited to lend it to me,” William says. “I’ve never been so excited to have tiny fingers.”

Ryan found the linchpin of his ceremony look during a stroll through Soho. “I walked into Louis Vuitton and saw a cream suit jacket with a criss-cross lapel and a little Dove brooch and I fell in love,” he said. “It also happened to be Virgil Abloh’s last collectsion for Louis Vuitton before his passing, so it was an incredibly special piece.” The statement jacket compelled him to wear all-white to the ceremony, including a Tom Ford shirt, Western-style boots from Alessandro Vasini, and a perfectly matching tie: “William sourced fabric and had Walter Schick at [New York neckwear company] Bentley Cravats make one for me,” Ryan said.

After separate welcome dinners with their families the Friday before their Sunday wedding (William at Le Crocodile at the Wythe and Ryan at MAMO), the couple held a small rehearsal dinner at Café Colette in Williamsburg on Saturday with the same small group that would attend the ceremony—their parents, grandparents, siblings and their best friend—followed by welcome drinks at Shelter to greet all of their out-of-town guests.

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.”

William selected a striped charcoal flannel from Fox & Brothers for Ryan’s reception jumpsuit: “We went super classic, with some specific nods to early YSL,” William says. “The shoulder construction really was the thing that tied the two reception jumpsuits together.” He credits Geri Gerard, veteran owner of an eponymous New York sample room and the maker of all of the wedding’s Stautberg pieces—with building custom shoulder pads for both. (Gerard also notably constructed Cardi B’s intricate, red-feathered Thom Browne gown for the 2019 Met Gala at her atelier in the Garment District.)

“It was very important to me for everything to be made in the city where Ryan and I have spent the last seven years together,” says William.

Back under their constellation of disco balls, the grooms fittingly danced to the likes of Donna Summer and Madonna’s Confessions on a Dance Floor, spun on vinyl by DJ Dart Collective. “We definitely had some Gaga greatest hits and Celine Dion thrown in there, too,” William laughs. “We are a gay fashion designer and hairstylist, after all.”

Ryan and William are still enjoying the “simmer-down” as they— scrupulously as ever — plan an Italian honeymoon for next summer. “We decided to start our two-week trip in Lake Como for Aperol spritzes and relaxation,” Ryan says, “and then head to Florence for some vintage shopping and dinners at some of our favorite spots, like Serre Torrigiani and La Buchetta,” before finishing the holiday on the beach in Positano.

Their marriage may be new, but “in all of the best ways,” William says, “nothing has really changed.”