a study of the institution of marriage: well, if you really want to do that. we can sum it up rather succinctly. Only un until the 20th century women were considered property of their husbands and were routinely "sold" into marriages by their father. Even today, this has only changed in the "civilized" world.
This is absolutely incorrect, and even a cursory examination of the history of the family in Europe (let alone elsewhere) would make this obvious. Women did not begin to lose most of the rights they had known through much of European history until the Late Medieval Period (and this loss of status and rights seems to have indirectly been the result of primogeniture in the context of Medieval society...) 11th century Norse women, for example, generally had significantly greater freedom and power than did American women in 1920. Popular culture, I'm afraid, is a very poor History teacher. You're better off going to academic or primary sources.
I will say that there was
one European group that treated women extraordinarily poor—the ancient Greeks, and it was particularly wealthy women which had the fewest freedoms (this is actually true throughout history—poor women generally enjoyed more social and economic freedom, and married later, than their noble counterparts).
Your conclusions regarding what should have to happen in a marriage contains a great deal of specious reasoning. Wonderful rhetoric, but it seems quite empty when you look at it pragmatically.
The institution of marriage, as it were, has been co-opted by religion and now only serves 2 real functions: the religious and the legal.
You've ignored the social function, of course. And, frankly, there's a thin line between the religious and the social, in some circumstances.
I'm going to be getting married this summer, and I plan on having 3 separate ceremonies, essentially. One religious & legal, and two social.
Despite my disagreement on most of your conclusions and statements concerning history, I do not oppose at all separating the functions of marriage. Make it so that legal unions involves no ceremony whatsoever: simply a matter of filling out paperwork, based on the pragmatic needs and effects of legal unions. Then let religions have their ceremonies, and everyone do whatever they want socially. Voilà, everyone's happy.
[Edit: Though I certainly wouldn't mind getting government out of it entirely, per Renoard.]