In Sakaltutan, the wedding begins four days or more before consummation, with the raising of a flag over the groom's house, the offering of hospitality in a large guest room - often borrowed from kin or neighbours - and the arrival of a drummer and piper. During the day, the men wrestle, dance, dress up as bandits, play soldiers, or watch professional male entertainers, sometimes dressed as dancing girls. In the evening the festivities continue in the guest room, with songs, stories, practical jokes and charades, often bawdy, and when the numbers drop, late at night, a game of `find the ring' played with upturned coffee cups.
Women, during the day, watch from afar. But in the evenings they too forgather, to dance in strict privacy, in a large living room or guest room. By this stage, seven or eight women, (yenge) will have been chosen, whose task it is to fetch the bride. They consist of kin of the groom, including members of his household (but never his mother), and one or two from other villages, and also of one or two non-kin neighbours. These are expected to dress in their wedding clothes and dance every evening during the dügün. In Sakaltutan, the final day must always, they insisted, be a Thursday or a Sunday, though in Elbashï the only days said to be barred were Tuesday and Friday. On the appropriate day, or the evening before if the distance is great, a party of men twenty to thirty strong, not including the groom, escort the yenge to the bride's home.
On the girl's side, far less public ceremony has taken place. A close circle of women kin and neighbours meet to dance for a few nights before the wedding. On the day before, the bride's right hand is ceremonially dyed with henna.
When the party arrives to fetch the bride, the men and women are entertained separately. The men may be allocated to different hosts in the girl's village, if the wedding is on a large scale. Dancing, foolery, coffee and cigarettes abound. The visitors are said to be `under the orders' of their hosts. There is much talk of singing publicly for the company, with threats of beating with cushions for the defaulters, and the