Kettu Kalyanam

Kettu Kalyanam, also known as Thali Kettu was the name of an elaborate mock-marriage ceremony of the Samanthan, Nair, Maaran, and Ambalavasi communities of the southern Indian state of Kerala. The customs varied from region to region and caste to caste. Sambandham (matrilineal form of marriage) may take place only if the bride had already had this elaborate ritual mock-marriage known as Kettu Kalyanam. The Kettu Kalyanam ceremony is ceremonial only as after the ceremony rituals the groom returns to his house, never to meet the bride again, even though he technically can later marry her in Sambandham. Immediately after the ceremony a formal divorce is constituted. Sambandham (ie, cloth-giving ceremony, actual marriage) happens only after Thirandu Kalyanam (puberty ceremony), while Tali Kettu must be performed before Thirandu Kalyanam. This practice was also performed in North Malabar, where Nairs were patrilocal.

Among the Nairs, every ten or twelve years each lineage held a grand ceremony at its oldest ancestral house, at which time all immature girls of the lineage of one generation were ritually married by men of "enangar" groups. (Linked neighborhood kinship groups not of the same family group as the brides). This ceremony, called tālikettukalyānam ("tāli-tying ceremony") had to be performed for each girl before puberty, on pain of her excommunication from her caste (Gough, 1955). At the ceremony, each bridegroom, in the company of representatives of every household in the neighborhood, tied a gold ornament (tāli) round the neck of his bride. 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 them again.

After the tāli ritual, a girl was regarded as having attained the status of a mature woman, (this description by western anthropologists is obviously incorrect, as it's another separate ceremony, Thirandu Kalyanam, that is performed on attaining puberty) ready to bear children to perpetuate her lineage.

The tāli ceremony was both a religious and legal ceremony between the lineage and Enangu group, and thus can be seen as a form of mass marriage, even though it is just a mock-marriage and Sambandham is the actual marriage.