The rite takes an hour. The wedding takes a week.
The sagan is the engagement. The chooda is the set of red and white bangles put on the bride by her maternal uncle. The jago is the night before, when the women of the family go round the village with a decorated pot of lamps on their heads, singing and waking everyone up.
The milni is the formal meeting of the two families, relative by corresponding relative, with gifts. The sithniyan are the abusive songs the bride's women sing at the groom's party, which are required and are enjoyed.
The doli is the departure, and the songs sung at it are the oldest and saddest part of the whole sequence, because they are about a daughter leaving permanently for a household of strangers, which is what village exogamy meant.
Almost none of this is Sikh, Hindu or Muslim in origin. It is Punjabi, and it is performed with local variation by all three across both countries.
The expenditure has inflated to the point that the Punjabi wedding is a leading cause of rural debt, and every attempt to regulate it, by gurdwara resolution and by legislation, has failed.
The sequence runs roka, thaka, chunni, sagan, mehndi, jago, the barat, the ceremony, the doli and the muklawa, and each has its own songs and its own obligations.
Almost all of it is the woman's family's expense, and the scale of it is the direct mechanism by which a daughter costs a household more than a son.
The reform movements have argued against the scale for a hundred years and the ceremonies have got larger. What has changed is the venue: from the courtyard to the marriage palace on the bypass.