My story opens with a wedding that, while not conventionally royal in real-life terms, has an unmistakably similar air. Members of an old and powerful family of vampires that secretly control most of the American South are celebrating a member of another powerful allied immortal organization (which runs most of the American Northwest) marrying into their family. And I'm trying to get a sense of what sorts of people, beyond the immediate families of the two brides, would be in attendance, so I can have analogues for those sorts of people in attendance as well. Historically, in the case of weddings between the royalty of two nations, what sorts of people wind up getting invited to attend?
Obviously, all the extended immediate royal family from both sides, then lesser nobility, then the whos-who of the upper-class citizenry.
Royal weddings: Bishops. Wouldn't it be tasty to have some Bishops in attendance at a vampire wedding too?
Right. So, if they are welcome, that is suggestive of highest possible level of corruption within the Church, without having to explicitly state it. Aren't vampire stories really all about corruption?
Honey, if even one bride is Southern, then everyone gets asked, from the extended royal family on both sides to members of Mom's royal bridge club to the sorority sisters the bride and bride knew at Vahtsbiting U. Evening weddings are pretty common in the South, so no one need worry about coming out into that nasty old sunlight.
