Well, not sure how things go over in the UK, but in the US that piece of paper confers rights of survivorship, visitation, custody of children, and such. My wife knows I love her, but without that piece of paper the hospital doesn't and would not let me visit her were she to be in an Intensive Care Unit. Nor would the state accept that any assets bearing her name were our assets if she were to unexpectedly pass away. The piece of paper does confer some rights that come with the decision to enter into a lifelong union with another and without the paper you're pretty much just acquaintances in a legal sense.

Did you know that if you shacked up with a woman, had young kids with her,

No point punishing a woman with your attitude

By all Means... MARRY!
I recently read that love is entirely a matter of chemistry.
That must be why my wife treats me like toxic waste.
- David Bissonette

When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her.
- Sacha Guitry

After marriage, husband and wife become two sides of a coin; they just can't face each other, but still they stay together.
- Hemant Joshi

By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you'll be happy.
If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
- Socrates

Woman inspires us to great things, and prevents us from achieving them.
- Dumas

The great question... which I have not been able to answer... is, 'What does a woman want?
- Sigmund Freud

I had some words with my wife, and she had some paragraphs with me.
- Anonymous

'Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing.
She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays.'
- Henny Youngman

'I don't worry about terrorism. I was married for two years.'
- Sam Kinison

'There's a way of transferring funds that is even faster than electronic banking.
It's called marriage.'
- James Holt McGavran

'I've had bad luck with both my wives. The first one left me, and the second one didn't.'
- Patrick Murray

Two secrets to keep your marriage brimming
1. Whenever you're wrong, admit it,
2. Whenever you're right, shut up.
- Nash

The most effective way to remember your wife's birthday is to forget it once...
- Anonymous

You know what I did before I married? Anything I wanted to.
- Henny Youngman

My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met.
- Rodney Dangerfield

A good wife always forgives her husband when she's wrong.
- Milton Berle

Marriage is the only war where one sleeps with the enemy.
- Anonymous

A man inserted an 'ad' in the classifieds: 'Wife wanted'.
Next day he received a hundred letters. They all said the same thing: 'You can have mine.'
- Anonymous

First Guy (proudly): 'My wife's an angel!'
Second Guy: 'You're lucky, mine's still alive.'

Collected by Redmarvel