Some women planning same-sex marriages say they add another step to shopping that may not be necessary for their straight counterparts.

When Heather Sarver first embarked on the rite of wedding-dress shopping with her mother in the small-town bridal boutiques in Virginia where she grew up, she said she had her wedding planner, Bernadette Coveney Smith, call ahead to inform the salespeople that Ms. Sarver, 31, a lawyer, is a lesbian, and then gauge their reaction.

The reasons were both profound and pragmatic: to protect her from salespeople who might be uncomfortable in that situation, and to avoid that awkward moment when a salesperson would inevitably ask about the spouse-to-be, “So what does he do?”

Lesbian brides “need to screen the people they are working with,” Ms. Smith said. “It ends up being an extra level of stress or potential stress when you’re shopping.” For couples like Ms. Sarver and her wife-to-be, Ms. Smith founded the event planning company 14 Stories, which specializes in non-heterosexual weddings, as well as the Gay Wedding Institute, which trains wedding industry professionals about the nuances of same-sex weddings.

Ms. Sarver and Jessica Mullan, 31 and also a lawyer, will both wear lacy strapless gowns, a decision that posed its own challenges. The pair used Ms. Mullan’s sister as a go-between to analyze each choice and make sure the dresses didn’t clash for the wedding ceremony in Boston, and have revealed tiny pictures to each other on their cellphones, held at a far enough distance so as to not give away the details. “I didn’t want one dress to be a lot more over the top than the other one, and then have one of us look like more of the center of attention,” Ms. Mullan said.

When the ceremony starts, they will walk down two separate aisles toward each other — getting their first full glimpse of their dresses at that moment — and then they will depart together down a central aisle. But there are still some wrinkles to work out. “Hopefully there’s not any falls or stepping on each other’s dresses,” Ms. Mullan said. “But if there is, that will make for an even more memorable evening, I’m sure.”