The concept started in Detroit in 1968 as an outgrowth of the Marriage Encounter experience. Catholic Engaged Encounter, as it presently exists and is structured, began pilot weekends in 1974. It was founded as a national entity in 1975.

CEE began in the Diocese of Birmingham in 1978 with 40 couples making a weekend. Since 2008, the Diocese of Birmingham has hosted 162 CEE weekends and 2689 engaged couples. In the last 12 months, we've held 10 weekends with a total of 160 engaged couples attending. This represents approximately 50 percent of all marriages in the Diocese of Birmingham.

We cannot expect to reach all engaged couples without growing our community of committed volunteers. For information about joining our community, please go here.

Engaged Encounter is an international organization, with weekends taking place all over the world:

• United States
• Canada
• Mexico
• Carribean: Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, and Trinidad & Tobago
• Central America: Costa Rica, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and Republica Dominicana
• South America: Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Paraguay
• Europe: Ireland, England, and Scotland
• South Africa
• India
• Southeast Asia: Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore
• and even China