Engaged Encounter

My FH and I live together but we didn't tell the Catholic church we were living together. We don't have to do a weekend we just had the couple to couple meetings.

Hi! We're having a Lutheran wedding but my mom heard of EE at her (Lutheran) church and wanted to send us to one. Unfortunately, with FH's work/travel schedule and our move, we haven't been able to schedule it yet and I don't know when we'll be able to.

I remember doing some research and finding out that a lot of non-Catholic couples attend EE weekends for various reasons. It probably depends on the specific group you get, but it's supposed to be non-denominational.

Our pastor knows we live together, and there were a bunch of questions about cohabitating on the Enrich quiz we just took. He wasn't judgy at all, and Lutherans are usually on par with Catholics with that.

I did it in South Carolina! We went to the Catholic Church in downtown Charleston,and had the option to go the pra-canna on Sullivans Island, it was beautiful there and a very enjoyable day (of course that was my first marriage and 20 yrs ago :/ )

We did ours in NoVA. Just be prepared to do an insane amount of writing! Basically one of the lead couples will go over some stuff with you and then you and your fiancee are separated for 20-30 minutes to answer a bunch of questions, then you reunite alone to go over what each of you said. I was mentally exhausted afterwards, and not because there was any conflict...it was just an extremely long weekend. We lived together as well, and our priest didn't bat an eye...I don't remember it being brought up during EE either.

Also, on the last day you are asked to write a prayer for yourselves and then the lead couples say it with you. I kept ours and gave it to the priest the day before the wedding, he read it as part of the blessing at our reception...surprised the heck out of my husband!

I am getting married in South Carolina however we are not catholic. This thing you are talking about sounds interesting.

Katie where are you getting married? What city?

Nevermind! I just read your bio

I love Pretty PLace too and we were going to get married there except the reception venues being so far away killed it for us.

Michelle, we had several non-catholic couples in our EE....in fact apart from attending Mass and the brief discussion on NFP, it had nothing to do with being catholic and everything to do with effective communication!

Michelle, we had several non-catholic couples in our EE....in fact apart from attending Mass and the brief discussion on NFP, it had nothing to do with being catholic and everything to do with effective communication!

I really, really wish my husband and I could've done a couple's thing like that. Unfortunately we live in The Middle of Nowheresville and the closest one to us in our state was 5 hours away. We might've been able to find one in a town an hour and a half away in the next state if we were lucky, but that would require involving a third church and we just didn't want to deal with that. So we just did our Pre-Cana "classes" in our nearest town (50 miles), and our wedding was in DH's home state & parish. Our classes were really awful. I was so bummed because I was looking forward to them but it was nothing but a joke and we didn't learn a thing. I hope you'll have better luck!

We lived together but didn't get any flack for it because of the economic times; people seemed to understand that. A house and an apartment would've been ridiculous money-wise, if not impossble.

Thanks everyone for your comments! I'm kind of excited now! We took the FOCCUS test a while ago and I thought it was very informative. We talked about some of the results with our priest and mentor couple and I thought it was very beneficial. We already have really good communication, but it definitely never hurts to keep it up and learn even more!

@Michelle F - I've always wanted to get married at Pretty Place, but it's just not logistically practical. I went to a wedding at The Cliffs at Glassy and while it was beautiful and amazing, it SUCKED driving there and back. I was starving by the end of the ceremony and still had to drive over an hour to the reception and wait during the cocktail hour (there was no food, only drinks). Plus...getting married outdoors terrifies me and I just decided between the scheduling issues and me not being able to handle the bugs and weather...church for us (Also...the Catholic Church doesn't really like couples getting married outside)