Out of Town Bridal Shower

The bride can always ship any gifts to her home. Or you might want to look into alternative "shower" ideas like a luncheon or brunch.
As for the bridesmaids who dont want to host they are off the hook for paying anything. Make sure you can pay for the number of guests you are hosting with those helping to host.

Hosting a bridal shower is not a requirement from your BM. Nor is paying for one. I kind of get there point it is out of town so why should they travel spending money on hotel room gas money or possible flight. For a wedding shower. A lot of brides have no shower. As far as gifts put you would like them mailed to your house.

What about a date night themed bridal shower? The gifts are likely to consist of gift cards and small items to go with it. That way she doesn’t have to carry too much home with her. Flying home with an extra suitcase doesn’t seem like the worst problem in the world.

1) You can have the gifts mailed back home.

2) They are not required to financially contribute anything or host another shower.

Have them pack an extra suitcase to help bring the gifts back. Any large gifts may need to be shipped.

We're doing something similar, wedding is in Califor is but FH and his family are in Texas so his mom is hosting g a shower in Texas to keep the family involved. Most of them are not traveling to the wedding. I would love it if my bridesmaids attended but I really dont expect them to fly in for a shower. I knew going into this that they would not be able to attend most pre wedding events and that's OK.
Although, if the roles were reversed I would probably make the trip to attend the shower.

My mom is hosting a shower for me in another state. She just put a line on the invite that said "please note the bride will be traveling by plane" and left it at that. The shower is this weekend and we've had many gifts delivered to our home already. I'm also bringing an extra bag with me to check on my flight home if need be. I think most will understand and bring smaller gifts to the shower and if not, they can always be shipped.

I would say that the bridesmaids that are not attending should still be responsible if the shower is being covered by the bridal party. They are included in that group and unless they are hosting their own shower, it falls under their responsibilities. It really just depends on the bride and how it is setup though. I have been to showers where its a small get together and the bride/brides family cover and others where the bridal party covers. If the bridal party is covering it should be split between them all.

If it is too far to drive and no one intends to make the drive in the next couple months then I would recommend having everyone ship their gifts home with Zola or any of those services and maybe for the bridal shower just bring something small or gift cards for the items on their registry.

Thanks for the feedback!

we don’t want to burden guests by asking them to ship gifts on behalf of the bride, so we’ll suggest the bride have an extra suitcase and ship gifts herself.

for the non-paying BMs, i guess i’m in the minority, as i would have expected a bridesmaid to participate, regardless of their attendance (because that’s what i would have done had the locales been reversed).

i didn’t put details in my orig post because i was looking for how this should be handled in general - not necessarily for our particular scenario. we asked months ago if the long distance bridesmaids wanted to participate in the hometown shower and none said No. now that money is due they are suddenly backing out, which is putting a financial burden on the three of us that are participating. perhaps they should have been more clear into their intentions early on, but regardless, we need to push forward, with or without them.