Doran Hoffman and Lacey McLennand at their wedding in New Orleans. (Family photo)

When Lacey McLennand was growing up here in the late ’90s, she was a big fan of ska, including a local band called The Worms.

She pasted the band’s sticker on her bedroom door when she was a senior at Wellington High, and went to some of their shows. But she didn’t meet anyone in the band until last year.

By then a local kindergarten teacher, McLennand, 30, happened to get tickets for SunFest 2008 from the mother of one of her students.

She was in the mosh pit at last year’s Mighty Mighty Bosstones show when Doran Hoffman, 29, overheard her talking about local bands. By coincidence, he was in The Worms.

He asked what a woman wearing Versace glasses was doing in a mosh pit.

“I said, ‘Hey, can you look out for me in the pit? Because it can get kind of nasty down there,’” McLennand said. They started talking about local music, mutual interests, how happy they were to be there.

It wasn’t something either of them would normally do – “I’m pretty shy and she is very shy,” Hoffman said.

But “I was so happy, so excited to see the Bosstones,” McLennand said.

But they left without exchanging numbers. Later, she e-mailed Hoffman at The Worms’ MySpace page.

Hoffman went to Santaluces High but had since moved to Gulf Shores (Ala.), where he works as a commercial fisherman. A month after SunFest, he invited her out for a visit.

“There was just an instant connection,” McLennand said. A trip planned for one week turned into two, and on their last night on the beach, Hoffman proposed.

They married Feb. 28 in New Orleans, with a meal in one of Emeril’s restaurants, and a parade down Decatur Street with an 8-piece brass band. They live together in Gulf Shores, where McLennand is substituting while waiting for a full-time teaching job.

They had everything in common, and even friends who had known each other for years, she said. But until SunFest, she said, “our lives just kind of ran parallel. We never met.”