My daughter called me for advice yesterday because she is thinking she may have to back out of a July wedding that is scheduled for 3 weeks after she is due to give birth to her first child. She accepted the role of bridesmaid before she got pregnant. (The good news is that there is a maternity version of the BM dress, which D will need, since she won't have lost the baby weight yet.)
I advised her to wait until the time gets closer, since she doesn't know how things will go, and it doesn't seem right to back out when there may not be a need and the bride really wants her to be there.
But I get her concerns. The bride is one of those women who has planned her wedding since childhood, and has all sorts of ideas about the festivities surrounding it. (She is from a fundamentalist Christian family, very sheltered, and even though she attends a different church now, weddings are still a huge deal in her community. I'm pretty sure they are why Pinterest was invented.) She told my D that she was planning a 3-day bachelorette thing at a lakeside cabin to take place less than a week before the wedding. D told her she was unlikely to be able to make the event, since she will be nursing a newborn, but her friend asked her to "just try" to come for part of it with the baby. It's clear that neither young woman really knows what to expect, since this is new to both of them.
D's husband cannot attend the wedding because of work, so the bride suggested that I come as D's plus one and hold the baby during the ceremony. I don't mind this at all, of course, but D is still not sure if she will be able to fully participate, since she has no idea how the birth and recovery will go.
If you were the bride, would you rather your BM back out now, or wait and hope for the best, even if you knew she was unlikely to be able to attend all of the pre-parties?