Among the communities that practiced the custom, a grand ceremony would be held at its oldest ancestral house. All the girls of appropriate age of the lineage of one generation were ritually married to chosen bridegrooms of Malayalam: enangar (linked neighborhood kinship groups not of the same family group as the brides). This ceremony, called Malayalam: tālikettukalyānam ("tāli-tying ceremony") had to be performed for each girl before puberty, on pain of her excommunication from her caste.[1] At the ceremony, each bridegroom, in the company of representatives of every household in the neighbourhood, tied a gold ornament (a Malayalam: tāli|italic=no) round the neck of his bride.[2] Each couple was then secluded in a room of the ancestral house for three days and nights. On the fourth day the bridegrooms departed; they had no further obligations, and did not need to visit the brides again.
After the Malayalam: tāli|italic=no ritual, a girl was regarded as having attained the status of a mature woman, ready to bear children to perpetuate her lineage. This social recognition of marriageability was entirely separate from community acknowledgement of physical maturity upon reaching puberty. For that, there was a separate ceremony, Malayalam: Thirandu Kalyanam, performed at a girl's menarche.
The Malayalam: tāli|italic=no-tying ritual was both a religious and legal ceremony between the lineage and Malayalam: enangu|italic=no group, and thus can be seen as a form of mass marriage, even though it is in practice only a mock-marriage, while the later Malayalam: sambandham are actual marriages.