Great topic and one that isn't examined enough in my opinion.
I assume I'm against marriage in this particular exchange.
In my counter, I'll take the defense that marriage is not important because of the disproportionate negative consequences for men. So let me give a counter in form of a story as Plato was known to do;

Lets say we have a man, lets call him Joe. Now Joe meets a woman, lets call her Mary. Now Joe loves Mary, and has decided that he's done dating and wants nothing more than to be with her for the rest of his life and have kids together. Mary consents to kids but makes it clear, she wants to be wed. And not just any marriage. No no no, she wants a big wedding to outshine her friend Sarah. And not just that, she needs a diamond ring to show off to her friends. As we've said, Joe loves his soon to be wife and wants to give her the best in the world. He isn't a rich man but everybody knows that an engagement ring should cost 2.5 months salary. So Joe goes and gets the expensive diamond ring for his soon to be wife with a loan from the credit union.
COST OF DIAMOND (average wage in Ireland 2016 = 45,000 / 12 x 2.5 = 9,375 lets say €9,000)

So before Joe has even secured his wife he is now 9000 in debt. The next step is to tell everyone and invite people. he pays for fancy invites, he books a church, he books a reception for guests, he gets a cake, a dress for her and her brides maids, the best men suits, the flowers, the dinner, the band, the make up and of course, the drink. The average cost of all this amounts to on average in 2014 to €19,635 lets call it 20,000. http://www.mrs2be.ie/wedding-business/irish-wedding-survey-2015/

The next thing is of course the honeymoon. according to the same link above that's going to be roughly 5000.

Now before they have begun their new life, both Joe and Mary are in the hole for 34,000, automatically putting a huge financial burden on the relationship from the get go.

Now a few years go on, Mary is a stay at home Mam and they have 2 beautiful kids together. life is good, Joe has his own business which he worked his ass off to make successful and doesn't have a bad salary. He has a house and even a dog called Rex. He comes home early from work one day to surprise his beautiful wife Mary with flowers and Bam! She's in bed with another man.

Joe's life is falling apart now. He never thought to get a prenup because he never thought this would happen to him. Now as we all know, the courts are skewed to favour woman in divorce cases and right off the bat she gets 50% of everything he has. That includes a 50% stake in his business. Also, she gets the family home and gets to keep the kids as she is the "primary care giver" even though it was him who wanted them in the first place.

To top it all off, he has to pay her alimony off what he earns and of course child support on his 2 kids. She even kept the dog.

Now Mary sells her stake to his business to his competitor and because of them the company is now ruined.

The worst thing is that she has the man she had cheated with move into his bed and he suggested she uses her money from Joe to fund a boob job.

The most heart breaking part of the story is that she turns the kids against Joe by lying to them about how horrible he is and then his kids don't want to see him anymore. They even call the new guy Daddy.

And because he can no longer afford the payments to his wife of the alimony and the child support he gets sent to jail. His reputation is of a deadbeat Dad and his name is dirt to everybody he knows.

Now what would you do in this situation?

Granted, this is a very extreme case of shit going bad but we aren't here to talk about best case scenario. Would you enter a legally binding agreement knowing that this is a potential outcome?

If they weren't married he wouldn't have spend that money on 1 day and could of maybe used it to fund his business early on, so maybe he'd spend more time at home and this wouldn't of happened. He could sever ties with the wife easier and since the house is in his name she'd have no right to it. Because she doesn't have a suitable place for the kids to live the courts may rule for him to keep the kids. And Rex? Well I wouldn't give my dog up for anyone.