A record 276 couples entered ceremonial wedlock at a mass wedding held at Sree Krishna temple in Guruvayur on Monday.

The brides and the grooms, accompanied by their relatives, started arriving at the temple premises by 4.30 a.m. to get the weddings solemnised on this day of the Malayalam month Chingam, considered to be most auspicious to conduct weddings. They were waiting patiently in queue to get a call from the ‘Koyma’ priest to enter the special enclosure of the venue. The weddings were held in three mandapams in the temple.

According to sources, many of them had booked the tickets for the weddings even three months earlier. All the essentials, including traditional music, required for the wedding were arranged by the temple.

Each wedding took around 10 minutes. The ceremony went on till the shrine closed after afternoon pujas. However, the continued after the temple opened in the evening.

There was a huge demand for jasmine flowers, that were specially brought from Tamil Nadu for decoration purposes. (A minimum of Rs. 10,000 and a maximum of Rs 1.5 lakh worth flowers were bought for decorating the mandapams, sources said.)

Though the Dewaswom Board does not maintain marriage records, the municipal office register the weddings and issue the marriage certificate on the same day. It is available online too.