It’s asserted the best relationships begin as friendships, and Joan Sberna and Kyle Pecorino— who met last year working at Las Vegas’ XS Nightclub—are proof. “We started as friends while working at XS,” Joan remembers. “We would spend time and travel a great deal together due to mutual friends. We were always in relationships and accustomed to giving one another advice whenever we worked together.”

When they got seated together at a friend’s wedding in 2016, though, things took an intimate turn. “I told [the bride] to place me in a fun singles table at her wedding,” Joan says. “[Instead], she put me alongside Kyle having a table filled with couples. I just laughed and thought nothing of it. Kyle said he'd pick me up as his ‘date’ for that wedding and also the entire night we pretended I was married and that I was pregnant together with his baby.” She continues: “Something just clicked in the wedding while I was ‘pretending’ to become a couple—we went from joking around to realizing I was intended to be.” A year later at Burning Man, Kyle told Joan he is in love.

His proposal infused light and happiness into an otherwise hard time. “My dad became sick in 2018, and I was there within the hospital room when Kyle requested his blessing in marriage,” Joan says. “It was this type of special moment all of us shared. My Dad visited heaven understanding that Kyle and I were going to have a very good life together.”

“I thought I was going to a family dinner,” Joan remembers from the night before her father's funeral. “We possess a rooftop deck at our home and my niece explained Kyle required to see me available online because something was wrong using the furniture. I was preparing for dinner and didn't think anything unusual was happening. I opened the doorway to the top and saw rose petals leading up towards the deck. I went up the stairs during my dinner outfit and house slippers and saw Kyle sitting on the rooftop looking so handsome in the suit.

There became a huge surprise party at black wedding dresses our home after I said ‘yes.’ We had Dad’s funeral the following day as an engaged couple.”

For their wedding on September 2, 2020, they escaped the intense lights of Las Vegas and retreated into the woods, selecting Twenty Mile House in Cromberg, California, his or her venue. The romantic event infused nature, homages for their fathers, far more love.