Washington

PAT DWYER and Stephen Mosher bounded out of a beat-up blue van on Tuesday afternoon and set up a white barstool on the sidewalk in front of the United States Supreme Court. It was 25 years to the day since they had become a couple, and several dozen friends and relatives had come to the capital to celebrate. Mr. Dwyer and Mr. Mosher were getting married.

Again.

They had said “I do” before, not once, not twice, but six times. The District of Columbia made seven. In a slightly zany, low-budget cross-country adventure, Mr. Dwyer, who at 48 is trying to remake himself as an actor, and Mr. Mosher, 46, an events planner, traveled from their Manhattan home to exchange wedding vows and rings in every state and jurisdiction that allows same-sex marriage — and one, California, that did and now does not.

They eloped to Connecticut, joined by two friends who kept their secret with a “pinky swear.” They then professed their love on a Vermont farm, on a covered bridge in New Hampshire, inside the living room of a Massachusetts home. They stood under a Jewish wedding canopy and stomped on a glass in Iowa. (Neither is Jewish.) They donned brass rings on their middle fingers — a not-too-subtle protest against California’s Proposition 8, the voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage — in a yoga studio there while the ban was in place. Mr. Dwyer called it an “act of civil disobedience.”

Tuesday was their final wedding, unless perchance same-sex marriage becomes legal someplace else. It was a brief ceremony, one part performance art (a documentary filmmaker is chronicling their journey), one part political statement and one part expression of commitment, conducted under a blazing midday sun against the backdrop of the court’s soaring white columns and the words, “Equal Justice Under Law.”