A few weeks back, Justin and I attended a Louisville Catholic
Engaged Encounter weekend at Mt. Saint Francis. If you’re keeping up, we are
both Catholic and we’re getting married in the Catholic Church. My dad’s cousin
(Father Matthew) is a priest and he is going to marry us which makes our day
extra special.
The Catholic Church has some requirements for couples getting married
and both Father Matthew and the priest at my parent’s church recommended the
Engaged Encounter Weekend to us. We had heard mixed reviews about the weekend
and with our busy schedules we debated whether or not we wanted to attend. {Obviously}
we decided to attend the retreat.
We had to arrive at the retreat center by 7:30am on a Saturday morning.
We checked into our (separate) rooms and the retreat started at 8:00. I was expecting
just a few other couples to be there so I was a tad overwhelmed when I learned
there were 24 other couples on the retreat with us. Almost everyone was around
our age and most of them had the same look of anticipation /intrigue/tiredness
on their face that we did. The first thing we did is turn off our phones so
unfortunately I don’t have lots of
There were two couples (married 17 years and 9 years) and a priest
leading our retreat. I was worried that the retreat might get a little “churchy,”
but it never really did (except for 1 discussion and mass to wrap up the
weekend). We were given a booklet upon arrival that had an outline of subjects
and some questions/thought starters for each topic.
The theme of the retreat is, “A wedding is a day…a marriage is a
lifetime” and everything revolved around how to build a deep, meaningful marriage. The flow was pretty much the same for the entire weekend. A talk given by one
of the couples, we had a bit of alone time to write in our notebooks, and
couple time to discuss our answers.
We covered 17 different topics over the course of the weekend. 16 of
those topics were incredibly relevant and I was so impressed at how the retreat
leaders opened up and shared their stories with us. We got SO. MUCH. out of the
weekend and I’m so glad we both went in with open minds. A piece of advice we
got was, you’ll get out of the weekend what you put in. We talked a lot about prayer and spirituality and how to incorporate those in our marriage which is not something we talk about on the regular. There were topics on romance and kids, finances and in-laws, and everything in-between. We were both completely
open and usually ran out of time to finish our conversations! I’m not gonna lie
– we both cried at one point. It was really cool to be able to write down all
of our answers and share them with each other. I’m really glad we had to write
stuff down so that we can go back and read it later.
So to wrap it up (before I get too mushy and weepy), if you’re engaged,
ATTEND THE ENGAGED ENCOUNTER WEEKEND. It is a jam packed, emotional, exciting 31 hours and I would happily go back next weekend if they would let me. Even if you think you’ve already “talked
about everything,” I promise that you will leave the retreat feeling even
closer to your significant other than you ever thought possible.
I could write another 600 words and STILL not be finished talking about
our weekend and how fantastic it was. If you want additional info/details, send
me a note and I’d be happy to share.
Engaged/Married people: What type of pre-martial prep did you participate
in?
What is your advice for a long & happy marriage?
For more info and to find a retreat near you, CLICK HERE.
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