One thing I'm curious about is people's use of the word "not legal". Like "you can have a commitment ceremony between three people, but it's not legal."
I assume people mean that it does not have any legal effect, rather than it is an illegal act.
If/when I say not legal, I mean "not legally binding". There are no rights or benefits that are transferred in a commitment ceremony.
I believe that in the US, a religious marriage, without signing the legal paperwork also would not be legally binding. As in, if you married in a church, even if you lived "as a married couple" (whatever that means, being that there can be so many permutations of that) from a tax standpoint and legal standpoint (spousal privilege, inheritance, power of medical attorney), if you didn't also sign the legal paperwork to register that marriage with the state, you wouldn't gain any of the benefits afforded by marriage.
Jon and I are actually going to do a private ring exchange ceremony (private as in "only the two of us are invited") in a few months (this was in the words as of very early this year, before things when really downhill with Lora). After the ceremony, we're going to talk to an attorney who specializes in poly, to get whatever documents together that we need to, for inheritance and medical power of attorney.
Because, as you pointed out, we couldn't currently get those until we married. And we don't want to marry until it's possible to have polyamorous marriage. Neither of us like the idea of a potential future partner that we'd want to share out life/lives with having less rights or less protections than we do, because we got married and thus can't marry anybody else.
The only exception we make to that is that if one of us got cancer/a serious illness, we would marry so that the person with cancer/serious illness would be able to sign on to the better health care program (assuming that the sick person had a significantly crappier health care program). Assuming that the sick person didn't die, I'm not sure if we'd get a divorce afterward or not. Probably. Which I'd be fine with (though maybe a little bit sad for a bit), as the marriage would just be a vehicle for better medical care.
Honestly, I feel pretty certain that if I met someone and fell in love with him/her, and s/he was already married, and this person wanted/believed that I was co-primaries with his/her spouse, I don't know if I could handle that. I think the marriage would really bother me.
Which I'm not saying is right or wrong, it's just a thing that I feel, deep in my heart. Even if I didn't want it to bother me, it really would. Even if we became a triad and everything was unicorns and rainbows, knowing that if something happened and things went sour with my metamour (or one of my loves, if it was a triad), knowing that my metamour/former love would legally have the ability to keep me from my partner (were something bad to happen), because they were married...that would stress me out too damn much.
I've seen too much petty shit from people who I would have never thought would engage in petty shit to trust the vast majority of humanity not to get neck-deep in petty shit, if s/he felt like they were entitled to behave that way.
I may have written that a bit convolutedly. I hope it makes sense.