From the beginning, right? Mmmmm, no. Here's and excerpt from an article on the matter:

>> The early church had no specific rite for marriage. This was left up to the secular authorities of the Roman Empire, since marriage is a legal concern for the legitimacy of heirs. When the Empire became Christian under Constantine, Christian emperors continued the imperial control of marriage, as the Code of Justinian makes clear. When the Empire faltered in the West, church courts took up the role of legal adjudicator of valid marriages. But there was still no special religious meaning to the institution. As the best scholar of sacramental history, Joseph Martos, puts it: “Before the eleventh century there was no such thing as a Christian wedding ceremony in the Latin church, and throughout the Middle Ages there was no single church ritual for solemnizing marriage between Christians.”

>> Only in the twelfth century was a claim made for some supernatural favor (grace) bestowed on marriage as a sacrament. By the next century marriage had been added to the biblically sacred number of seven sacraments. Since Thomas Aquinas argued that the spouses’ consent is the efficient cause of marriage and the seal of intercourse was the final cause, it is hard to see what a priest’s blessing could add to the reality of the bond. And bad effects followed. This sacralizing of the natural reality led to a demoting of Yahwist marriage, the only kind Jesus recognized, as inferior to “true marriage” in a church.

>> The church fathers ranged from men who thought that marriage was a lesser good than celibacy (St. Augustine) and those who thought it a lesser evil than fornication (St. Jerome). Most seemed to agree with St. Paul that “It is well for a man not to touch a woman.” (1.Cor 7:1)

>> The Church came to marriage late and grudgingly. Only in the twelfth century did Aquinas add an Aristotelian spin on marriage and make it a sacrament. Note that this is not a biblical argument but a natural law argument. Protestant founders like Luther and Calvin seemed to reject it when they left marriage as a civil institution. <<

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unreasonablefaith/2012/05/marriage-compromise-and-a-counteroffer/

It what form I might ask? Until recently, marriage was viewed more like a property contract, the transfer of a girl from the possession of her father to that of her husband, and by recently I mean within the last few hundred years. The truth is, the idea of what marriage is and what it means has been constantly shifting and evolving over millennium, just as sexual gender roles.

For example, in the early middle ages, women, so long as they were not slaves, often ran the majority of small businesses; shops, inns, eateries, ext, while men concentrated more on physical labor. It was only when the male priest and bishops of the Catholic church were trying to weaken the political power of the nuns, that these professions became the sole legal domain of men, and that women became viewed as the property of their husbands or fathers.

It will all be clear when they translate the scrolls that describe Jesus getting sealed to three different women in the temple, because, ya know, that's the New and Everlasting Covenant.