Marriage? Why, it’s the greatest weapon in any noble’s arsenal! Let me enlighten you on matters of state and power.

Marriage isn’t about love; that’s a peasant’s fantasy. For those of us who bear the weight of ancient houses, marriage is statecraft of the highest order.

When I wed the second daughter of House Tyrell, I gained three castles along the Roseroad and secured my southern border against those Dornish vipers. Her father’s bannermen now answer my call; five thousand spears when winter comes.

Marriage binds blood to blood. When your wife bears your children, you’ve created heirs that unite two powerful lineages. Should some upstart lord challenge either house, they face the combined might of both.

Consider the Lannisters and their gold. A prudent marriage there secures not just coin for your depleted coffers, but access to their formidable fleet. Or perhaps the Arryns, whose impregnable Eyrie would shield your lands from eastern invaders.

Politics shifts like quicksand, but marriage creates bonds that even the most treacherous lords hesitate to break. The realm notices when sacred vows are betrayed, and remembers.

So you ask what’s the point? Power, lands, armies, legitimacy, and the future of your house. What greater purpose exists for those of us born to rule?

Now pass the wine. These matters of dynasty have made my throat dry.

Marriage wasn’t important to me, either - I was with my now husband for many years before we tied the knot. I’d never been one for the traditional big wedding, wasn’t sure what difference it would make, etc.

What changed? My Mum died - and in all the times at hospital and then dealing with the funeral etc - I realised just how important being “next of kin” actually is. In so many ways. And while you can cover most of your bases with various legal documents - honestly there’s already a super easy way, that is very well understood all over the world, that achieves this.

And while I wasn’t expecting it to feel any different afterwards, it really did - for both of us. More certainty and just really solid.

when it costs so much money.

What? Why should it? We married cheap, no rings or anything, it costs next to nothing.

Just last month, I left work early on a Thursday, met my now husband at the local courthouse, and we got married! Cost about $50 bucks. We’re happy as clams about it, our families wanted us to do more but, that sounds like a them problem honestly lol

I do feel differently. Not more committed, I’ve long been ride or die with this human, but I get this sweet, sudden uprush of cozy emotions when I say, “my husband”, or when he calls me “wife”. I love him a lot and it makes me simultaneously very proud and very humble to declare that publicly.

Aight, you seem to want to ignore the legal benefits, so I won’t mention that beyond saying that it is a hell of a lot easier to get married than to figure out all the paperwork needed to duplicate it, and not even have the exact same outcomes, just the majority. The tax thing, for example, you can’t file jointly if you aren’t married, no matter what else you set up (edit: in places where things like common law marriage aren’t recognized)

The biggest thing is the experience, imo. The memory.

Now, me and my wife went to the JoP, with our kid and required witnesses (my best friend and his husband).

No fancy reception, no major party, just went home and said to my dad “we’re back, no problems.” He said congratulations, and went back to watching TV.

Total spent was about a hundred bucks, including gas. And the memories of it are wonderful, we cherish it all, and we’re happy as hell we didn’t do anything else.

Wedding ceremonies, however, are expensive once you go beyond that bare minimum. That’s a cultural/sociological thing where the needs of the individual and the culture mesh into not only believing it necessary, but beneficial.

And, for the people that want it, it is beneficial. Ceremonies, rites, rituals, they serve a purpose beyond the legal or official status that comes with them. Weddings are as much about community as they are the couple. It’s the union being both recognized and celebrated at the same time, even when it’s a secular ceremony rather than religious.

Don’t get me wrong, the money spent on empty bullshit surrounding weddings is absurd. But the actual wedding, where the community stands around the couple is incredibly powerful in terms of validation, even when it’s the license that really matters legally. You can have ceremonies without the license; I performed several of them back before same sex marriage became legal. Those events were important, and doubly so because they had no legal standing.

I think that’s what you’re missing, that there’s a massive difference between two people shacking up and marriage. When the people involved swear an oath, and/or exchange symbols of union it means something, even if there’s no witnesses, not even someone to perform a ceremony. But as you move into witnesses and an officiant, it feels different because it is a public commitment. You can still divorce or whatever, but it happened, and you can never deny that. That moment, the vows, they exist in a way they don’t if you swear only to each other.

Yeah, two people can be just as committed, and honor their commitment perfectly without anything else. But it feels different.

Now, again, I’d argue that once you start shelling out for crazy dresses and cake and niche receptions, you hit diminishing returns very quick. That’s to satisfy other things, not the union itself. It may well make people happy, but it doesn’t add anything to the underlying point of there being a ceremony in the first place. That of saying to the world “where once there were two, now there are one”.

Not that anyone has to share the valuation, but it’s what underlies the whole thing, and it has value

First of all getting married is extremely cheap, just a small fee in most countries.

A marriage is a legal document that brings many legal consequences, from tax to residency and even hospital and death care there are many reasons why that document might be important for you. If you’re going to spend the rest of your life with someone else, it makes a lot of sense to do it, it makes lots of stuff much easier.

Jus an fyi, getting married costs basically nothing unless you have a wedding. It literally costs like $55 for the certificate at the court. You don’t have to have a wedding that costs $50K. I know multiple people who literally just had some people over and got pizzas.

It gives us certain rights and protections, tax benefits, etc. Hospital visitations, legal stuff, the ability to get in your own queue for immigration, and it’s a sign to each other that you both are committed to each other for the long haul. It’s a sign of trust.

A wedding can cost almost nothing. I found a very small local poor church and offered them $100 bucks to use the place on a Saturday. I baked a big cake, decorated it plain white. I overnight smoked a brisket, made a pan of Mac and cheese.

Got a friend to officiate, and told our friends and families a month in advance. We told everyone it was a potluck. We got $100 plain rings. My grandmother ended up buying some cool flowers for decorations. A friend played some music on the church speakers.

All in, it probably cost us $400 out of pocket, and we got enough cash from attendees to cover that and pay for us to take off work for the week to just hang out and move in together, staycation style. To be fair, I don’t think either of us would have wanted a vacation style honeymoon, we did that kind of thing later. That first week was a lot of figuring out how to live together, so that took time.

So it’s possible to have a big party with friends and family, but spend very little. Just have everyone bring some food and it’ll work out.

Studies show that folks are less likely to have a happy long term marriage the more they spend on a wedding. It’s a pretty clear correlation that expensive weddings typically make folks more unhappy and starts the relationship off with more financial stress. So, don’t feel bad about being frugal! As long as you are both happy, it can be very inexpensive.

If you’re looking for a rational argument for the big party or the religious ceremony or anything like that – You won’t find it. These things are meant to play to the emotional, and this isn’t a flaw, it’s the whole point. People really need to embrace that we are, in fact, very emotional creatures, and that this is not a bad thing, and that yes, a lot of the things we do are done just for the emotional satisfaction of it. Because it’s fun, because it will make you or someone you care about happy.

If neither you nor your partner give two shits about big parties or ceremonies, then neither of you needs to bother. If said partner does want this and you don’t, then y’know, maybe have a good chat about that and find a compromise. That’s how partnerships work. (Me personally I’d love to organise my own wedding and go all quirky with it, but I can live without it)

Being legally married is a separate thing, and is inexpensive in most countries (just a small fee so the bureaucrats can process the bureaucracy), and at least in my country is often done weeks if not months in advance of the big party and/or religious ceremony, with the couple already being legally married while they organise their wedding stuff. To be legally married is to have you and your partner recognised by The State ™ as being a family unit. This has uses for a few situations in life.

It’s a shorthand for all those other legal arrangements, in a pragmatic sense. You can build the same thing with documents that confer the different legal relationships, or you can use the pre-packaged bundle. A lot of the one-off arrangements require a lawyer and filling fees for each document, where the bundle can be done for a $25 or so fee, and a judge or the clerk who collected the fee, depending on your jurisdiction.

There are also social and relationship perks to a public declaration of commitment. It doesn’t change anything, but a public declaration can make things explicit on all accounts.
Rings are just a social shorthand to communicate that to others passively

They also don’t actually need to be expensive. They became expensive because people are usually willing to shell out a little more for a special occasion, and a lot of people wedged themselves in and argued that without them it wasn’t really special. If you can’t put a price on love, then how can $10k be too much?

If you’ve decided to make a public commitment, a little party to celebrate is legitimately fun. You just need to separate what you need for the party to be fun and feeling like the scale of the party is a testament to your love or sincerity.

When I got married the ceremony was five minutes and done by a friend of ours, we had our friends and the closer circle of relatives as guests and we didn’t need to save up for things because we only got what would make us happy for our party. Our rings were cheaper than most because we talked to a jewler and had them make something according to our designs, and neither of us like diamonds. (Mine is a metal reinforced piece of a beautiful rock we found while rock hunting at a favorite camping spot, and hers is her favorite color, laid out well to avoid snagging on clothing.)

The feminists don’t agree but historically marriage is there to protect the woman from having to raise a child alone. It is a socially and legally binding promise from the man that he won’t abandon her when she sacrifices her ability to fend for herself in order to bear children.

It greatly simplifies life from a legal standpoint. It’s basically like creating a tiny corporation of two people that can act as a single legal entity. If you’re married it simplifies buying a house together, inheritance, medical decisions, etc. As others have pointed out, these are important especially when your partner’s family don’t approve of you or the relationship especially for LGBT people.

I am going to break the mold though and say the actual ceremony is important too. Declaring your intention to stay together for life in front of your friends and family changes things. It adds a level of security and finality to the relationship- you have to put your money where your mouth is on the relationship. Although people frequently do it, I don’t know how someone can go through the wedding process without reflecting on how big of a deal it is to stand up in front of so many of your friends and family and declare your intention to stay together forever, even without the religious ritual aspect of it. I wouldn’t want to have kids with someone without having this commitment, for example. Ultimately even though marriage is a social construct, I think it’s still a useful one even in a world where women are no longer considered property of men.

I didn’t get married for the love or the religious reasons, it’s just way easier when you buy a house together. Now, if I die, all my stuff automatically belongs to my wife.

We got married on a Tuesday morning at the municipal building at 8:30 making it free. The only thing we spent money on was the rings.

It doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. Mine was maybe 2 thousand and actually broke even thanks to very generous cash gifts, but even without that it would have been worth it to get all our friends and family under one roof to publicly profess our love.

If you truly love your partner, does a ring and a ceremony really do anything?

Yeah. In the same way that any other shared experience or token does, but this is a very public one that is built up by our cultures and we can imbue with special meaning.

It’s not for everyone, and it can be problematic, but I’m happy I got married and got the magic ring and all that.