I think it’s easy to think it’s not important when it’s so easy to GET married. It’s mighty important when you are not allowed to do so.
IOW, we generally take it for granted.

i’m happily married to a divorce lawyer. if anything, his job makes our marriage stronger. he sees the petty disagreements that people have and knows how to avoid them, and also sees first-hand the consequences of divorce on children. getting married was important for him, and we waited until i was ready, which took over six years after we first started dating. i wanted children, knew that i wanted to spend my life with him, and wanted the public, legal, and religious commitment of marriage. the article about this woman strong-arming her husband into marriage made me really uncomfortable. i don’t think men or women should be pushed into marriage, and blaming this man’s career for what was obviously his individual perspective was annoying. also, i’d point out that committed relationships, marital or otherwise, can always break, but you remain a co-parent forever.

For me, getting married before I had kids was very important. I had nightmares where I would be pregnant but not married and I always felt so dissapointed during the dream and a few seconds after I woke up until I realized that it was not true. However, I did not get the fever because of the wedding, when I met my husband I was determined to work on our relationship because I knew I found the person I wanted to spend my life with. I don’t think I would have been married if it wasn’t to him.
The only annoyance that marriage brought for me was having to decide if I was going to change my last name (which I didn’t) and having to consult him to make some decisions. I have always been very independent.

@daira: thanks! I agree – I didn’t think the man in the Telegraph article was resistant to marriage because of anything intrinsic to his job. Lots of people don’t want to marry for any number of reasons. I love the way you wrote about why it was important to you to be married.

Hi,

I just want to put it out there that I believe in marriage, but I don’t really believe a wedding is what makes a marriage. I don’t live in the U.S. so I don’t have any of the legal/healthcare issues that unmarried couples seem to have there; in Canada my common-law relationship is legally recognised as being equal to marriage.

My partner is my husband in every way. We met eighteen years ago when I was travelling in Europe and we’ve had to overcome all the hurdles that long distance relationships bring about (separation from our families and friends, immigration paperwork, etc) but I simply see a wedding as being a symbolic gesture (much like a birthday party is to a birthday) and the marriage as being the commitment and the relationship itself. We now have two children, aged almost-seven and four and love support each other unconditionally. He is the best (and funniest) man I know and is exactly the right match for me.

I feel like a make a vow to him every morning when I wake up and see his face on the pillow next to mine.

For me, and I recognize that this is personal, you’re either committed or you’re not; a wedding is a lovely thing to do if you’re into it, but certainly not necessary to build a marriage.

I have been with my man/partner/boyfriend/fiance for almost 10 years. Along the way, we had a child together. She is now 7 years old. After all this time, he’s finally proposed to me and we’ll be getting married in 2 weeks, just us and our daughter. Very intimate. I absolutely don’t agree with people who think that parents should be married. We have created a stable family life over the past decade and in all things function as a normal married couple/family unit. The difference that has occurred is that right now, it feels right to take a moment to focus on us as a couple and re-affirm our love with a ceremony. I personally, don’t need the ring, or the joint checking account. In fact, we still will not have combined accounts once we tie the knot, but the thing that does make a difference to me is the affirmation of our vows…verbally…to each other. We never made a “big deal” about our relationship. It’s nice to celebrate our relationship on it’s own (although still being integral to the family unit). Our daughter will be joining us in our ceremony and at the moment is sort of ambivalent about the whole thing. I am looking forward to having a shared last name for ease of filling out school forms, etc. (hopefully we can convince our daughter to also change her name, which is currently hyphenated…she’s not so sure we shouldn’t all hyphenate.) :) Also, we’ve been discriminated against when renting homes because we weren’t married, so those things will be easier.