For Irina Shepitko and Irina Fedotova-Fet, in matching black and white trouser suits with white wedding bouquets and passports in the their hands, the disappointment was entirely predictable, Moskovsky Komsomlets reported on its website.
"We want to be like everyone else," the women told a throng of journalists outside the registry office.
The newspaper said the fashion entrepreneur and the PR specialist were the third same-sex couple to attempt to get married in Russia, and like the four men before them the two women were turned away.
The chief registrar, Svetlana Potamoshneva, referred to the third point of the first article of the Family Code, which requires the union be between a man and a woman.
MK said the couple proved their lasting love - "It was love at first sight," Fet recalled - and Shepitko's younger sister Olga declared her support for the match - "As if I am getting an extra sister" - but it was to no avail.
So the unhappy couple said they would march in Saturday's unsanctioned gay pride parade in Moscow and later fly to Canada to have their union registered by a family law court.
"It is simply offensive that this will take place in another country, but not in our native land," said Nikolai Alekseyev, the head of the Gay Russia Project.
