By the time Bayleigh Regina Pelham was cast on Season 11 of “Big Brother Canada,” she was overdue for some good news. She had lost her job and her boyfriend had ended their relationship. A reality show seemed like a perfect fresh start.
She gave up her sublet in Halifax, Nova Scotia, put her things in storage and headed to Toronto.
Then, just before filming began, she was cut from the show.
Why? It turns out another ex-boyfriend — not the one who had just dumped her — had also been cast. One of them had to go. It was Pelham.
“At the time,” she said, “it was the worst thing that ever happened to me.”
Hoping to escape her streak of bad luck, Pelham decided to take a solo trip to Sayulita, Mexico. She mentioned the trip to a friend, who happened to be traveling there with a group of companions.
Pelham mostly wanted time alone, but she decided to book her trip with three days of their stays overlapping.
When Pelham arrived in March 2023, her friend introduced her to one of those companions, Stephanie Cassano.
Pelham, who had experimented with women in the past but only dated men, was caught off guard when Cassano greeted her with a kiss on the cheek — one that was “very close to my lips,” Pelham said.
Pelham recalled thinking, “I’m not gay, but if I was …” Cassano would be her type.
Over the next few days, the two spent a lot of time together. “We became really good friends,” Pelham said.
Then, one evening, Cassano handed one of her AirPods to Pelham. John Vincent III’s “Next to You” was playing. In that moment, Pelham said, “something inside me was pulling me toward her.”
“Meeting Bayleigh opened my eyes,” Cassano said. “I didn’t want to stay away from her.”
The night before Cassano left Mexico, the two finally acknowledged the feelings that were brewing between them. But Cassano was in a relationship at the time.
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Pelham said she never imagined herself falling in love with or dating a woman. Still, “I can’t explain the energetic, the magnetic feeling,” she said. “I tried to stay away from her, and I couldn’t.”
Before Cassano left Mexico, the two kissed. Cassano and Pelham agreed not to be in touch for the next week while Pelham was still in Mexico.
But they did make plans to meet at Locals Only, where Cassano works as a bar manager, when Pelham got back to Toronto.
Cassano, 36, recently completed a certificate at the Fire and Emergency Training Institute in Mississauga, Ontario, and is working toward securing a position as a firefighter. She was born and raised in Toronto.
Pelham, 37, is a content creator and actress with credits that include commercials for Google and WhatsApp. She also works as a bartender at Paros Yorkville, a Mediterranean restaurant and lounge in Toronto. She holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, where she was born and raised.
On April 7, Pelham kept her word and met up with Cassano at her job. “I remember feeling like I couldn’t breathe,” Pelham said. “That same electric feeling I had felt around her in Mexico came rushing back.”
The feeling was mutual. “She looked so good,” Cassano said. “And it felt really good to see her again.”
Cassano made Pelham a drink and, although they talked here and there, the bar was busy, so “we basically just spent the whole night staring at each other from across the room,” Cassano said.
That night, Pelham said, “I cried myself to sleep convinced that it was over. I was worried she was not really ready yet.”
The next day, Cassano sent Pelham a text saying she had to see her again. They went out for a drink that night before she went to work. And Pelham went to see her again at Locals Only later that night.
“We promised each other that we would stop talking until she could figure everything out,” Pelham said of Cassano’s relationship. “Then she texted me at six in the morning saying she’d had a dream about me.”
The two haven’t stopped talking since.
“We fell in love with each other,” Pelham said.
Pelham had been making plans to move back to Toronto. She arranged a sublet and a job in Toronto, and moved there a few weeks later.
By then, Cassano and her partner had broken up.
The day Pelham returned to Toronto, Cassano stopped by quickly to see her before she headed to work. The two shared a kiss in Cassano’s car in the rain.
The next night, they had a sleepover after a long day at work. “Very PG,” Pelham said.
And on April 30, 2023, the couple had their first proper date, dinner at Florette on Queen West, followed by cocktails at Prequel & Co. Apothecary nearby.
“It was one of those dates where the relationship suddenly started to feel much more real,” Pelham said. “Something much bigger than a vacation connection.”
They saw one another every day after that.
At the end of June 2023, during Toronto Pride, “standing in the middle of the street, in the pouring rain, Steph asked me to be her girlfriend,” Pelham said.
A few short months later, the two officially moved into the main floor of a house owned by Cassano’s parents in St. Clair West, where they still live.
Pelham’s ex-boyfriend ended up winning Season 11 of Big Brother Canada. And, much to her surprise, the production team called Pelham and asked her to be on Season 12. She accepted and won that season, which aired from March to May 2024.
In late January 2025, Cassano proposed at a post-holiday family gathering. Cassano’s mother feigned needing help gathering chairs to lure Pelham outside. Pelham realized their song, “Next to You,” was playing and Cassano asked her to dance.
As they danced, Cassano professed her love before getting down on one knee. Pelham said yes, and the two went inside so Cassano could share another surprise — Pelham’s parents were there to toast the engagement.
But there was one more surprise — a trip to Mexico two days later to the very place where the two had first met.
Wanting Cassano to feel equally loved, Pelham proposed during their engagement photo shoot in the Queen West area of Toronto in mid-February.
The couple married on Sept. 5 at Wheatfield Estate, Sparta, Ontario, Canada. Angella Bennett, ordained through the Togetherness Collective in Ontario, completed the legal paperwork with the couple during their first look, and their best friend, Samantha Gracie, led the ceremony that followed, before 140 guests.
Cassano, in a custom three-piece ivory suit, walked down the aisle with her father, Carlo Cassano. Pelham, wearing an off-white satin gown by Alexandra Grecco, walked down with her mother, Gina Pelham.
Pelham’s father, Cliff Pelham, then stood and “symbolically gave me away, which was an incredibly emotional moment,” Pelham said. Mr. Pelham had suffered a stroke the night of the couple’s engagement party in 2025 and has been in a wheelchair ever since.
The evening was a study in contrasts. The black-tie wedding took place in a rustic, Italian-inspired setting surrounded by olive trees, greenery and citrus. Guests dressed in black, while the brides stood out in off-white and ivory. Dinner was a classic Italian family-style meal served on long harvest tables, followed by a late-night rave.
Every detail marked a connection with the couple, their community and their families, they said.
Pelham’s mother designed and made Pelham’s second look, a short, 1920s-inspired dress in lace and fringe with a high neck and a low back.
Cassano’s suit, with the couple’s names and wedding date embroidered inside the jacket, was made by her aunt and uncle, Sandra and Dominic Calabretta, at their shop, Calabretta, in Woodbridge, Ontario. They made her second look, too, a custom vest with the couple’s pet name for one another embroidered on the back: “Baby.”
“Our families and friends have become one another’s people,” Pelham said. “And our wedding really brought that to life. It wasn’t really just about two people getting married. It was about watching our two worlds come together.”
On This Day
When Sept. 5, 2026
Where Wheatfield Estate, Sparta, Ontario, Canada
A Surprise Serenade A year before the wedding, Pelham began secretly taking piano lessons to surprise Cassano. Before their first dance at the reception, Pelham performed “Say You Won’t Let Go” by James Arthur. “It was one of my favorite moments of the entire night,” Pelham said.
Hey, Mr. D.J. The property included a space that was tucked away and surrounded by enormous trees that the couple immediately clocked for a “full forest rave” following the reception. Cassano’s cousin, Gabriel D’Angelo, was the D.J. for the rave and had been teaching Cassano how to D.J. before the wedding. “So, as a surprise to our guests, Steph actually D.J.’d the first few songs of the rave herself,” Pelham said.
Dear Diary As an ode to her time on “Big Brother Canada,” Pelham said they set up a “diary room” where guests could express their feelings on camera.
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