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I agree that marriage is silly. I have a live-in GF, and neither of us seems to want to make it legal. My brother got married, because otherwise his wife would have had to go back to Japan, so it was a practical consideration. But outside those type of circumstances, I think the wedding itself is what drives marriages at this point. My experience, from the friends and family whose weddings I've observed, has been that as soon as an engagement happens, full planning mode begins: food tasting, hall choosing, music selection, and, of course, the dress. Its a sickness that women suffer from because they're engendered to want that from the time they are conscious of the world around them.
Historically, it seems to me that marriage was (and still is in some primitive places) just another form of subjugation, more akin to slavery than love (for instance inter-spousal rape wasn't a crime in most states until the 1970s or 80s). The woman was passed from being owned by her father to her husband, and for taking on this "burden", the husband was compensated in the form of a dowry. Admittedly, I am from a household of divorce, so I think that my view on the topic has been soured, but I just can't find any objective reason why we still do this, unless its to pacify one's religious guilt, which, thankfully, I don't suffer from.