Out Of Town Bridal Shower...Please Help!

I am trying to figure out how to host a shower for my sister who lives in Chicago. I live in Pennsylvania/NJ area and so do the majority of the people who will attend the shower. It is not practical for her to ship all of her gifts back to Chicago - anyone have any ideas?

I have the same problem. My son and his fiancee live in Florida and all their family and friends live here in New York. It would be difficult to have something up here and then try to ship gifts back to FL. I was considering sending a note to all their friends and relatives to pick from a list of stores near them and send me a gift certificate with their names on them. Then as it gets closer to the wedding in October, I would send all the gift certificates in a pretty basket to their home as a surprise. Is this too tacky to ask people to do this? Would it be better if I just asked them to send a gift certificate or gift to their home directly? Need some advice here. I`m sure I`m not the first person to be faced with this situation. Please give me some good advice. Thanks so much. Marie

One suggestion if the bride to be can fly to her family`s place of residence - which would surely be cheaper than flying all of her gifts to her home!

Request on the invitation that gifts are sent to the couple`s home and that pictures of the gifts are printed and wrapped. Attendees can have fun with this, wrapping pictures of the gifts being sent in all shape and size boxes to make the opening more fun for the bride.

Simply state on the invite that while the request is a bit unconventional, this is the best way to share in this momentous occasion, without everyone flying themselves to the bride`s state, and this way everyone still can enjoy a fun filled day of honoring the bride and her relationship with good food, fun, friends and family!

Another thing you can do is send out "invitations" to the would be guests of an out of town bride along with a #10 sized envelope. Explain to "guests" that instead of having the bride come in out of town for a bridal shower you are going to mail her a shower. Everyone has to get creative and send their gifts in this envelope. You can have them all send them on a specific date (this would be like the date of the bridal shower.) If you want you can have people give the envelopes to you and send them all to her at once. This works really well for a bride who is flying in to have a shower but can`t take her gifts back on the plane because of space.

Try to have a `GIft Card` Theme. Ask guests to bring gift cards so that the bride can still feel honored without the hassle of shipping the gifts.
My bridal party hada a theme to be creative when wrapping the gift card. The most creative won a little prize. We had a lot of fun and it was a hit with all the guests!