The feminists don't agree but historically marriage is there to protect the woman from having to raise a child alone. It is a socially and legally binding promise from the man that he won't abandon her when she sacrifices her ability to fend for herself in order to bear children.
I’m generally curious why people get married beyond the “because I love them” when it costs so much money.
Getting married doesn't have to cost virtually anything. Really just the application fee to get a marriage license. The specific price will vary by state, and even by county (within the US, not sure how it works outside). Where I live, you can go to a courthouse and get married for $35.
If you plan to have kids, there are a lot of legal reasons why it's just a lot simpler to be married. The same applies without them, to a lesser degree, but with kids it's just so much more of a hassle to not be married.
You're right that you can achieve most (maybe even all?) legal benefits of marriage through trusts, wills, etc. But that's a hell of a lot more work, and the lawyer fees, filing fees, and application fees are almost certainly going to cost you more than a cheap courthouse marriage. Not to mention the added work for yourself.
Beyond all that, though, the single biggest reason I wanted to get married and have a wedding with lots of friends and family was to stand up in front of everyone and profess my love for my (now) wife, let her do the same for me, then have big party with all our friends and family to celebrate it. There's nothing wrong with spending money to throw a party for something you want to celebrate.
Getting legally married is intended to protect the couple under certain circumstances as you suggest. You could attempt to perform the same with other legal means but it would be harder and costlier; like you deciding not buying a car but putting one together yourself.
The notion people get legally married out of love or worse that "a paper does not say I can love a person" seem to just have a 7 year old notion of what marriage is
I didn't ever marry my ex, was irritated at how discriminatory legal marriage was back then, and we had kids so were a family anyway.
My husband now? He really wanted to be married, and "stepdad" is a different legal status than "mom's boyfriend", it smooths things when he had to do school pickup or doctor visit. So since he pushed and as I did see an upside we did.
Also you can't foster or adopt here unless you are married - unmarried man in the household is a known risk to the kids he's not related to. Statistically, it raises the risk of the kid getting hurt so single people can, or married couples but not unmarried hetero couples.
I am with you logically, I don't need it, and don't feel different and it's weird for the state to license families. I understand religious marriage but am not religious.
Visa.
The point is the legal benefits and publicly declaring your love and commitment, if you care about that.
You can spend as little as you want, if you only care about the legal status. But since you are probably asking about the usual big wedding - it's really just throwing a party to celebrate the act. It's not mandatory. Invite people you want to party with and celebrate life in a way you want.
What can suck about it is the peer pressure from parents and other people to do it the way they want, to do it "properly".
Socially it's an excuse to party with everyone you love.
Legally it's only worth it if you have kids, plan to migrate countries, or have shitty immediate family among other things. But if you're just in a long term relationship with your finances otherwise separated, no kids or end of life concerns, ~~then it can be somewhat detrimental as you're just inviting the state in to meddle with your life.~~ it's just a formal interaction with the state.
Edit: see replies.
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