Marriage is a long and fulfilling search to find the one person out of the 7 billion in the world that you love.

To get married is the ultimate celebration of love and is a way of telling your significant other that your love is real.

I understand that some people may have ulterior motives when getting married and others insist on spur-of-the-moment ceremonies in Las Vegas, but the vast majority marry for love.

Weddings are a chance to welcome your family and close friends to celebrate the love that you have found. Many people have looked forward to their wedding day since they were little and see it as the biggest moment of their lives.

However, the value of marriage seems to have decreased throughout the years in American society. I hate to admit it, but it just seems like more people are getting divorced each year. The yearly statistics of marriage and divorce rates indicate that about half of marriages in the U.S. end in divorce, but these are skewed because they fail to take into account the marriages that last long-term.

After adjusting for this, the divorce rate is still about 40 percent, according to an article written for Divorce.com. While I admit that this figure is still rather alarming, the reason for such high divorce rates is because people are marrying for the wrong reasons and not taking theirs vows seriously. With the way the media covers celebrity weddings and turning divorces into headlines, marriage gets depicted as a fashionable trend with the shelf life of an automobile.

Despite all of this, I believe that marriage is still important.

Why would someone want to live alone for the rest of their life anyways? Yes, you can live with someone and not be married and be just as happy, but marriage is the ultimate way to say “I love you” to someone and really show that you are committed to this one person for the rest of your life.

Marriage is something to look forward to. You are marrying your best friend, someone to come home to every night, someone to share your happiness with, and help you wipe away your tears. Marrying someone shows that you never plan to leave. Through thick and thin, sickness and health, you are in it until the very end.

A spouse is there to support you. There will be fighting and problems, of course, but what couple does not have arguments? Married or not, you will have to overcome issues with your loved one. But that is just a bump in the road that is able to be fixed.

Despite the divorce rate statistics, I just can not see the negatives of marriage. The cynical people can enjoy their king-sized beds alone in the cold of the night; I will be in my warm cozy bed with my husband.

When, or if, you choose to have children, how are you going to explain to your seven-year-old child why mommy and daddy are not married? This might allow the child to think it is okay to have children without being married which then may then create many single parents who will struggle throughout life.

Our society needs to bring marriage back to its original values. It is a serious commitment that cannot be taken lightly and if people realize this and make sure they marry the right person, America will see lower divorce rates.