Guruvayur is a textbook example of traditional Kerala temple architecture - a gabled roof, wooden carving and intricate sculpture, with the sanctum enclosed by the Nalambalam, the structure that rings the sanctum sanctorum. The Balikkal, or sacrificial stone, and the Deepastambam, the pillar of lights, stand within the premises, and the wall of the sanctum carries murals dating to the 17th century. The most conspicuous single feature is the Dwajasthamba, a flagstaff about 70 feet tall and sheathed entirely in gold. Of the temple's offerings the best known is the Thulabharam, in which a devotee is weighed on a large pair of scales against jaggery, coconuts, sugar or bananas, and the quantity balancing their weight is given to the deity. The temple also maintains a herd of captive male Asian elephants for its rituals, housed at the Punnathur Anakkotta - the elephant enclosure owned by the Devaswom a short distance from the temple, whose welfare standards the Kerala High Court has itself had occasion to supervise.

The clustering is not accidental. Chingam is the first month of the Malayalam calendar, falling roughly across August and September, and its first Sunday is treated as the single most auspicious slot of the year for a wedding at Guruvayur. Demand therefore concentrates on one morning rather than spreading across the season, which is why the temple ran six mandapams in parallel from before dawn and still could not complete every booking - 442 were scheduled and 416 solemnised. For administrators the day is a crowd-management exercise as much as a religious one, hence the deployment of more than a hundred civil police and standby Fire and Rescue teams. The same concentration explains why the record has been broken twice in recent years: as booking moved online and slot capacity was expanded, the ceiling on how many couples one auspicious morning can absorb has kept rising.