Couple returns to alma mater for wedding photos

LYNN ? Betsaida Ramos and Denae Pachucki were only acquaintances when they attended Lynn English High School in the late 1990s, but the place made an impression. The pair decided to go back to where it all started when they had their wedding photos taken there last month.?We originally met in junior high (Pickering), and later we went on to attend LEHS,” Pachucki wrote in an email.The pair thought it would be a kick to have photos taken in the hallowed halls, and photographer Bharat Parmar was only too happy to oblige.They were only acquaintances in high school, where Ramos was named Mrs. LEHS and Pachucki was voted Class Clown in 2000, their senior year. The women met up again during their five-year high school reunion, and that is when things began to heat up. By 2011 the pair was engaged, and on May 24, their eighth anniversary, they were wed but not before taking a few pictures for posterity in their alma mater, “the high school that brought us all together ? LEHS,” Pachucki said.By all, Pachucki meant her entire wedding party. The affair was an LEHS reunion of its own.Ramos is a Spanish teacher at Lynn Classical High School, which Pachucki said she likes to tease her about, but that is where the rivalry ends. Her maid of honor, Nicole Bene, is an English teacher at LEHS and an LEHS alumnus, Class of 1995.Pachucki’s best man was her brother Jeffrey, who graduated from LEHS in 2002, and her wife’s best man, Edward Junior Bene, graduated from LEHS in 1986.Only Ramos’ maid of honor, Christina Ramos, wasn’t a LEHS alum, Pachucki said.As an LEHS student, Pachucki was also one of the founders of the Gay-Straight Alliance somewhere around 1997, she said.?It was me and a woman named Renee Smallcomb,” she said. “Man, we’ve come a long way since then. Ten years of gay marriage in Mass. and coming up on the one-year anniversary of the defeat of DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act).”A long way indeed.