Bridal Shower Invites to Out-of-towners?

My MOH included a couple of close family members and FH's best girl friend. We figured they would not come, but the courtesy was nice.

I didn't have our OOT guests on the shower list. They're a plane ride away and I didn't want them to feel they needed to send me a gift. No one was going to be flying from Florida to NY for my shower. They were already spending so much on travel for the wedding as it was. I think this is a "know your guest" situation. I did find out my BIL's girlfriend was going to be in town visiting her mom that weekend so my MOH did extend an invitation to her.

We didn't send any invites to out of towners, It looks gift grabby, to me.

I was a little embarrassed that my mom sent shower invitations to some OOT guests - mainly family and some of my parents' friends. I wished she hadn't, but I wasn't involved at all. It felt gift-grabby to me.

We received a gift from one person who is my parents' friend. My mom was upset that some didn't even RSVP, but I asked her to please not worry about it.

I seem to have a different view on this, but I think you should invite out of town guests. My FH has some aunts that live in VA who will be invited to a shower in PA. They come up to visit periodically and have come up for other showers, so I think it's only right to invite them. They can decline if they're unable to make it.

In the past, certain family members have gotten upset over not being invited to something even though it was obvious that because of distance they would not be able to attend. So my mom and I played it safe and I gave her a list of all the female family members on our side and my fiance's side.

I guess it's different for our families because NO ONE lives in the same town as any other family members on either of our sides. So graduation parties, religious events, holidays, birthdays, etc always require some traveling, and surprisingly the family members that live more than an hour away typically do make the trip for those sorts of events so we couldn't just assume that someone wouldn't come.

I ran into this issue when we had our engagement party. My parents threw something together rather quickly, like in a 2 weeks time, and my mom had me handle the invitations. We didn't think to invite our out-of-town guests because we didn't think they'd come anyways because of the travel. One of my uncles was very upset they didn't get an invite.. the gesture would have been nice he had said.

My cousin in FL sent me an invite for hers. I live in OH and I was super broke at the time. We have seen each other maybe 12 times in our whole lives too so it's not like we are close. I was confused why she'd send an invite to someone who was clearly not coming.

I didn't really want a shower or a registry in the first place, but my cousin/MOH and rest of the family *really* wanted to throw one. So I've created a registry after all (what the hell) and the only people invited are family and a couple of close-like-family friends, plus my one other BM. My other BM is the only one out of town - she would have to fly. She was of course invited because she's in the bridal party but I was very clear with her that she should NOT plan to attend, that I'd rather her just spend her travel money on getting here for the wedding.

In essence, I think it's totally OK to not invite out of towners but if they are in the bridal party obviously a courtesy invitation is nice.

I wouldn't invite if the guest is more than a few hours away. When I get a shower invitation from someone really far away, I call it an "invitation to give a present," because really you know I'm not getting on a plane for your daughter's baby shower. I wasn't even invited to my MOH's bridal shower when I was her MOH because I lived 1500 miles away from her at the time.

Because there was no real practical place for me to have a bridal shower as I live across the country from most of my guests, I'm probably doing like a PP said and having a ladies lunch or something the week of my wedding to gather together the people I would like to invite to a shower.

As a military brat nearly all of my friends live in different places (including my bridesmaids). I think it's extremely weird not to consider out of towners for this reason lol