The Worldwide Marriage Encounter experience is primarily a space for you to pause, reflect, and reconnect privately.
The experience allows you to create a dialogue with each other and with God, to create a higher and broader understanding of what it means to be married.
While faith is a powerful part of this process, the focus of the Marriage Encounter experience is on the ups and downs of married life.
Married couples of any denomination, mixed-faith, or without religious affiliation are welcome!
Faithful to the Roman Catholic Church’s definition that marriage is a covenant that exists between one man and one woman, any reference to “marriage” or “couple” made by Worldwide Marriage Encounter is in this context.
The Worldwide Marriage Encounter experience is primarily a space for you to pause, reflect, and reconnect privately.
The experience allows you to create a dialogue with each other and with God, to create a higher and broader understanding of what it means to be married.
While faith is a powerful part of this process, the focus of the Marriage Encounter experience is on the ups and downs of married life.
Married couples of any denomination, mixed-faith, or without religious affiliation are welcome!
Faithful to the Roman Catholic Church’s definition that marriage is a covenant that exists between one man and one woman, any reference to “marriage” or “couple” made by Worldwide Marriage Encounter is in this context.
There’s no group discussion.
Over the course of the experience, three couples and a priest provide new tools, using examples from their own lives, to help couples work through common themes we can all relate to, such as:
- Exploring our personality styles
- Appreciating our differences
- Listening in a new way
- Communicating intimately
- Addressing difficult topics
- Discovering God’s desire for our marriage
- Continuing the journey
Learn to become the best version of yourselves together!
Several experience formats are available to help fit the needs of busy schedules.
The Worldwide Marriage Encounter experience, traditionally offered over a weekend, is now available in other formats to provide more options that may better fit busy schedules.
Weekend (Residential) Experiences typically are held in a hotel or retreat house and may begin on a Friday evening or a Saturday morning, continuing all day Saturday and culminating on Sunday afternoon. Sleeping accommodations and meals are provided. We ask participants to arrange care for their family members and pets for the duration of the experience.
Several experience formats are available to help fit the needs of busy schedules.
The Worldwide Marriage Encounter experience, traditionally offered over a weekend, is now available in other formats to provide more options that may better fit busy schedules.
Weekend (Residential) Experiences typically are held in a hotel or retreat house and may begin on a Friday evening or a Saturday morning, continuing all day Saturday and culminating on Sunday afternoon. Sleeping accommodations and meals are provided. We ask participants to arrange care for their family members and pets for the duration of the experience.
Non-Residential Weekend Experiences can be held in a parish hall or in the premises of a school. No sleeping accommodations are provided, but meals are served. Non-residential experiences may likewise start Friday evening or Saturday morning, ending on Sunday afternoon.
Restore, Rekindle, Renew Experiences are the same Marriage Encounter experience offered in seven sessions of 2-3 hours each. These are typically weeknight meetings
held at a parish or school premises. Local organizers will determine the day and time of the sessions.
Virtual Weekend Experiences follow the same schedule of a two or three- day weekend experience but are attended from home, using video conference software. Participants receive materials by regular mail and are offered a training session to familiarize with the software prior to the
experience.
Virtual Restore, Rekindle, Renew Experiences follow the 2-3 hour sessions of the 3RE format, but connecting from home using video conferencing software. These are typically seven virtual meetings. Local organizers will determine the day and time of the sessions.
Experiences for each of the above formats can be found on the Apply page.
A major survey spanning 20 years of WWME experiences and 4,000 responses, rated the program as “highly effective” with immediate and long-term positive effects for 9 out of 10 couples, according to the National Institute for the Family in Washington, DC.
For Couples
Learn new communication tools to to communicate from the heart and grow intimacy and connection!
For Priests
Reconnect and grow with your parish family with tools that can help you rediscover the joy in your priesthood!
For Your Parish
Strengthen your parish by scheduling Worldwide Marriage Experiences to enrich marriages and families!
what couples say
“This experience is A MUST for all couples. It will definitely bring back romance and joy in your marriage.”
“When my husband and I had no more hope, we found this organization. . . .We reconnected and fell in love all over again!”
“We had been married for ten years when we went. . . .We became much better parents because of it.”
“It was amazing! The most fruitful weekend my wife and I have ever had. Do whatever it takes and schedule yours now!”