What's the Point In Getting Married?

I have had this discussion on Twitter - is there any point in getting married? Personally, I would like to get married some day but I'm not in any way ready yet. I have been with my boyfriend for nearly 4 years but we're having to live apart because of work and studying etc. It's tough but we're doing alright and we still love each other.

I agree with people when they say "I don't need a piece of paper to prove I love someone" it's a completely valid point. You can have unhappily married couples and happily unmarried couples, marriage isn't a magic spell that suddenly makes your relationship much stronger. It's easy to see why people of religion see marriage as vital, it makes their relationship "official" and "right" in their God's eyes, so they are not living in sin. As an atheist I don't see marriage this way, I don't feel like I need to get married to make our relationship official and it certainly doesn't feel wrong not being married.

So why do I want to get married? My main reason is because marriage is like a celebration, it brings your families together, it's a big declaration of love and by law it gives you more rights as a couple. I also, admittedly like the tradition, the ceremony, the dress and the party afterwards. I wouldn't ever really have a properly traditional wedding, it certainly wouldn't be in a church as that wouldn't feel right. These days we have more freedom to make weddings more unique, some even choose to write their own vows. I understand if people still wouldn't want to get married, but personally I want to do the whole big day thing, but I wouldn't pay extortionate amounts! At the moment if I was given £20,000 right now, "wedding" won't be the first thing I think of.

Anyway, it's a long time away but I brought it up now because it was a recent discussion.