A gay aesthetic has long informed fashion, but it’s going to be interesting to see how quickly retailers respond to gay people as a segment of the wedding market. That will depend, of course, on how fast other states legalize same-sex marriage. Ms. Lyons said her boss, Millard Drexler, wanted to see same-sex couples in J. Crew’s catalog. “We talked about it as soon it happened,” she said of the vote. At that stage, she added, Mr. Drexler wasn’t thinking strategy. “It was a show of solidarity and support.”

That’s exactly how we felt in Paris. Boosted by Givenchy’s joyful attack of prints and the vote in New York, we put 1 and 1 together. Referring to the printed suits, Bruce said, “I immediately pictured them on a beach with two dudes.”

From the outset, we believed that same-sex couples had a unique set of considerations when choosing their wedding attire. “Do we coordinate? Do we mismatch? Do we not care about that all?” Bruce asked. As the comic Sandra Bernhard put it recently in a telephone conversation: “Let’s be honest, you can’t recreate what a typical wedding is with a gay couple. You are the same as that person.” Also, many people who in the 1970s and ’80s escaped their family dynamic have settled into lives. In terms of a wedding, Ms. Bernhard said, “They want something that is lasting, smart and represents continuity in their lives.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the three couples photographed for this article — all of whom are talking marriage within the next year or two — have fairly traditional views. Blake Glover, 30, a stylist, said that he and his partner, Austen Sydara, 23, a retail buyer, imagined a wedding with a “Brideshead Revisited” theme, because they loved the movie. “We’re going vintage traditional — we’re from the South,” said Mr. Glover, who was raised in Fort Mitchell, Ala.

Yet, like the other couples, the two men recognized the need for wedding attire that, as Mr. Glover, who favors bow ties and shorts, said, “takes you out of your everyday.”