Photo by © The Rovensky’s | Facebook.com/therovenksys
By Sadie Rose Lawless
Last February, my then-fiancé and I were given a weekend to Engaged Encounter at Warm Beach Camp shortly after we announced our engagement. “Gift” was a loose sense of the word at the time, as we were in the midst of trying to navigate the future on our own, as well as wedding planning stress. The day the event began, I was dreading the weekend. “Should I be dredging up possible problems to discuss?” “Do I have to talk to anybody?”

In reality, we covered everything you forget in the fog of engagement and planning and being in love. We learned that our differences, suddenly very apparent as we grew closer, were for our benefit — to be the ultimate complementary teammates! The couples on the panel shared genuinely, letting us in on years’ worth of marriage insight in a mere weekend. We didn’t have to say a word to the other couples in attendance, and were able to think through our thoughts on each topic separately before talking as a couple.

As if the experience of the weekend wasn’t enough, we connected with one of the host couples who then began meeting with us for regular pre-marital mentoring. Due to the tools we learned at Engaged Encounter for communication and conflict resolution, we made it to the wedding and continue to grow together as the (sometimes blatantly opposite) team we are becoming.

Warm Beach Camp holds Engaged Encounter weekends a few times each year. The next scheduled weekend is October 24-26, 2014. To learn more and to register: Engaged Encounter.