david - // We will have been married fifty years this September. Why did we bother to get a wedding certificate? To give our future children legitimacy. To symbolically confirm our intentions to each other. To secure legal status and entitlement. To publicly declare our status as a jointly agreed and legally recognised couple. To make reciprocal vows to each other, stating love and devotion. Fifty years ago these things mattered. To us, they still do.//
I can only concur with your post entirely.
I have been married for thirty-eight years in August, and my commitment to my wife was important, and I symbolise it by wearing a wedding ring.
There were, and are practical considerations - it enables us to make simple wills for each other, and our children and grand-children and great-grandchild - it is not to do with 'signing a piece of paper'.
People can be hurt badly by divorce - but people die in car crashes, it doesn't stop me owning and driving a car.
If you enter marriage with an eye on how traumatic a divorce may be, then you are either marrying the wrong person, or marriage is not for you.
Either way, it's not compulsory - if it suits you not to do it, then fine, I don't judge.