Shower in Geographical Location away from Current Home
(Here's my Intro Post)
My FH and I live in Little Rock, Arkansas.
The bulk of our families live near Cleveland, Ohio.
These two locations are approximately 14 hours' drive from one another.
My dear best friend, with the help of my mother, is going to throw me a bridal shower and invite both sides of family who live in Ohio. Bottom line, we'll be inviting about 50 guests. Not to sound like a greedy woman, but the purpose of a shower is to receive gifts, right? So that would equate to roughly 35 - 50 gifts, depending on if people go together for some bigger items (which would be totally cool!) We are thinking of registering with Bed, Bath and Beyond and Amazon.com, although we haven't begun our registries yet.
We are trying to be proactive in thinking about the logistics of getting the gifts back to Arkansas from Ohio. We would likely fly into town to attend the shower (so likely not much capacity for carrying too much back at that time), but will plan to drive back up to Ohio for the wedding a few months later. Storage of the gifts in the interim wouldn't be a problem, but we may end up needing to rent a truck or trailer or something to haul the haul (sorry) back from Ohio, since I drive a Honda Civic. We were thinking of carrying the gifts back right after our wedding but might end up detouring for a honeymoon in the Great Smoky Mountains and aren't sure that leaving all that stuff in the parked car/truck/trailer for a few days would be the best decision.
1. Is there a tactful way to indicate on the invitation that we would prefer gifts be shipped to our house in Arkansas? Typically if you spend greater than a certain amount (I think it's $50) on Amazon, they'll offer free super saver shipping, so that would be one way to not burden our guests with extra costs.
2. Are we being jerks for even thinking about this kind of thing? Should we just wait to see what we A) register for and B) receive before we think about the logistics of getting it back home?
3. My mom has mentioned gifting to us the Grandfather Clock that she inherited from her parents when they died and has mentioned giving it to me when we carry all the gifts back after the wedding. This is something I would not feel comfortable shipping, so probably the only way to get it where I am would be to rent a truck or a trailer. Does this change the logistics at all?
Thanks in advance!
As a reward for all of your help, here's a link to our fabulous engagement photos!
Edited to add: I just did a quick search of what it would cost to rent a truck one-way and it's roughly $800 (or more) so we'll probably be shipping whatever won't fit in my civic. My original question still stands though: whether it would be rude or not to ask for folks to ship gifts to our house if at all possible.