Is marriage the be all and end all in a relationship?

This might seem like a bit of a random blog entry, given that I am very happily almost married and have no doubts whatsoever about the big day coming up in a couple of months, but I got to thinking while lying wide awake in bed this morning about just how much importance society still places on what is, essentially, a piece of paper.
I can understand how to some people getting married is hugely important and that has a lot to do with both how you were raised and the beliefs and character traits of an individual.
I honestly do have no issues whatsoever with that, it is no different to any other dream in life that I might have which is important to me. Different people have different dreams and not one of them is right or wrong.
The thing I began pondering on is just how much importance is placed on marriage by society as a whole, including the influence of the media, even now in the 21st century.
Marriage as we know it, with the certificate you get and the register you sign, is a product of the church. There would not be such a thing as a civil ceremony if religion of some kind hadn't brought it in first.
But if you think about it, marriage in the bible was essentially some guy taking numerous women as 'his' and having them bear his children! There was no ceremony or paperwork involved, from what I remember. (I will admit, it has been a long time since I picked up a bible.)
I was raised a Catholic and I essentially still hold those beliefs true deep inside. The realities of whether there is a God do not really matter to me and I rarely go to church these days but, when it comes down to it, I try and be a good person like the faith taught me. I still say prayers for people I am worried about, regardless of the reality of whether anybody is listening but the hope that they are is usually enough.
Marriage is one of the most important things to a Catholic and you are still considered to be living in sin with a partner if you move in together without having signed on that dotted line.
I was raised that the following is a normal and happy life - meet a man, get engaged after a couple of years, marry him, have children, never divorce and live happily ever after. That is what I was taught was 'normal'.
My grandmothers, both devout Roman Catholics, utterly adore His Nibs and love him like he was one of their own.
Yet for the first couple of years after I moved away to live with him, they didn't tell any of their friends or the Italian community that I had done so. They simply said I had moved away 'for work'.
One of them has since changed her views, mainly because my cousin also moved in with his girlfriend, who already had a child from a previous relationship (again, a big no no in Italian peasant society) and my aunt has lived with her boyfriend for over a decade now and they refuse to get married. So she either adjusted her views or risked upsetting her family and now has no problems telling people I live with His Nibs.
However, the other one still doesn't offer this information and has been the biggest driving force in trying to convince us to get married. It became something of a joke in our family that His Nibs might not see his 30th birthday if he hadn't proposed before then, as Nonna M would probably do him in! Fortunately, he took her badgering in good humour and let it slide. Neither of us blame her for how she has acted, those are her beliefs and we just have to accept that. It doesn't mean she loves us any less.
For me, getting married had always been something that came in the 'would be nice' box. I loved the idea of it, because that was how I had been raised, but at the same time it had never formed part of my lifelong dreams as a teenager or as I became an adult.
His Nibs had never been bothered about marriage. His parents are married, as are all his aunts and uncles, but in his family there was no real importance placed on it. In fact, a couple of his relatives have said if they could do it all again these days, they probably wouldn't have bothered!
His cousin and her boyfriend have two amazing children and have been together for 12 years now. Neither of them want to get married.
My cousin also appears to have no interest in getting married but is happy and content with his missus and her little girl, who pretty much views him as her second dad.
Could it be that there is still so much around us giving the message that 'marriage is right' and 'living in sin isn't quite so right'? One of my bosses at work has been with her boyfriend for 15 years or so and neither of them are bothered about being married but are one of the most content and stable couples I know off!
Almost every advert featuring a family on television has the parents wearing wedding rings. Sitcoms, dramas, soaps - again 99 per cent of the relationships end with walking down the aisle, even if they then end in divorce a year later.
Strangers you meet will still act surprised when they find out you have lived together for years and not tied the not, especially if you have children.
Ever since His Nibs and I reached the two-year mark, I have lost count of the number of comments we had such as "wedding bells will be in the air then" or "ooh, well he'll be proposing some time soon".
To be honest, no, I never thought any of that!
I genuinely cannot wait to become Mrs His Nibs. I was so happy when he proposed and I am so excited for the big day.
But I can also say, hand on heart, that if he had never asked me to marry him, I would have been just as happy living with him 'in sin' for the rest of my life.
Being with His Nibs has always been what was important to me. We have a house together, the mortgage and deeds in joint names. We are both insured on each others cars. I enjoy spending time with him more than I do with anyone else (just!) and I love him with all my heart.
Having him in my life is and always was the thing I wanted. That was always going to be enough for me and I never saw him not proposing all those years as a sign he wasn't committed. I never, ever needed a ring on my finger for him to prove his commitment to me.
When I was at university, a friend who had been with her boyfriend for a couple of years told me that if he hadn't proposed before they reached three years, that was it, she was finishing with him.
That was just a completely foreign concept to me and something I found quite shocking! I am not saying that she was wrong, as clearly getting married was hugely important to her, but I could never feel the same way.
People in a relationship will always want different things and have different dreams in life. A common ground can be found for most of them but others, and often marriage and children can be the biggest ones, you sometimes can't.
That is when the compromise has to come in, when you have to decide whether being with the person is more important to you than the dreams you might have. I am not saying there is a right or wrong answer, but if marriage is something so important to you that you could not be happy for the rest of your life with someone if it never happens, you have to make the choice to either give up what you want for them or walk away.
As I have already said, this is only my opinion and I am not saying I am right or that anyone who feels differently is wrong. And I will admit, when various friends got engaged or married around me, I had the odd wistful thought of 'when is it my turn' but it was always fleeting and more to do with me being caught up in the moment than anything else!
I really hope this hasn't come across as hypocritical or condescending, as that was never my intention. As I said, nobody is right or wrong in what they believe and want, this is just how I feel about things.
But isn't it about time that society stopped judging us, however slightly or unconsciously, on whether or not we have a ring on the third finger of our left hand?