For over four decades, Worldwide Marriage Encounter has been a leading movement in offering married couples the gift of a weekend experience to enrich their relationship.

If a couple has been married for many years, the weekend can help enhance communication, renew commitment, and rekindle romance. If a couple has been married for a short time, the weekend can teach new skills needed to stay close through the ups and downs of life.

“Our Worldwide Marriage Encounter Weekend is the best thing we ever did for each other and for our marriage” is a phrase that has been heard from couples married for a couple of years, as well as couples married for decades. The positive effects are not limited to just the spouses; the entire family will benefit from the growing love as well.

Marriage Encounter is designed to give married couples the opportunity to examine their lives together. A time to share their feelings, hopes, disappointments, joys, and frustrations, and do so openly and honestly in a face-to-face, heart-to-heart environment with the one person they have chosen to live with for the rest of their lives. It’s a weekend to rediscover their relationship. Every marriage deserves that kind of attention!

The emphasis of the weekend is on communication between husband and wife, who spend a weekend together to concentrate on each other. It’s not a retreat, nor a marriage clinic, nor group sensitivity. It’s a unique approach aimed at revitalizing Christian marriage.

What happens at a Worldwide Marriage Encounter Weekend?

A team of Catholic couples and a Catholic priest give a series of presentations. Each presentation allows couples a rare opportunity to look at themselves as individuals, their marriage, and their relationship to one another. Finally, the couple looks at their relationship to God, the Church, and to the world.        

The weekend starts at 7 p.m. on Friday and runs until about 4 p.m. on Sunday. Worldwide Marriage Encounter invites all married couples to renew the romance, revitalize their marriage, communicate more openly, find deeper intimacy, focus on their spouse and share the joy by attending the Worldwide Marriage Encounter Weekend.

The next weekend in the Diocese of Birmingham will take place Nov. 1-3 at St. Bernard Abbey in Cullman. For more information or to register, please visit www.wwme.org or call Frank and Kathryn Wessling at 205-530-3607.