Baby shower question -gifts, please help!

So I am not throwing my baby shower, but my cousin and male best friend are insisting on throwing one for me. I’m currently living out of the country but will be back in town to visit for two weeks at the end of this month/first week of June. I know they are planning something for sometime in that period, as I’m due in August/September and it is the only time I’ll be back in the US and family and friends will be able to celebrate.

This is my first baby and I did create a private registry on amazon but mostly to track the things I want like a checklist for myself. My friend asked what I wanted to do about gifts and suggested people give monetary gifts if they’d like, because I am living in France and will obviously not be able to take a bunch of gifts back with me in my luggage. The cost to ship things overseas also wouldn’t be worth the value of the items, if that makes sense. It would just be a huge inconvenient hassle.

I considered sharing the registry with my friend so if people wanted to buy gifts, they could and have them sent directly to my address. The problem is, the shipping cost adds up on the items that do ship to France and id hate to make people pay a bunch for shipping, especially since sending it directly there would take the fun out of presenting/opening the gifts out the shower. Seems like even amazon is more geared toward US customers, sadly. And the major US chains aren’t available in France, like Buy Buy Baby, so it’s not like I can get gift cards or anything like that.

I don’t want it to look rude if the hosts specify monetary gifts, but that’s really the only practical thing to do in this case. I’d hate to get a bunch of things for the baby that I won’t be able to use because I won’t be able to transport them 😞

Under normal circumstances I would love to have a normal shower where I have a registry and open all the cute baby gifts, but it’s just not in the cards for where I’m living now.

Please advise what the best route would be here. My friend says it’s fine to just request monetary gifts given my situation, but how would they go about doing that? Do you think it would be rude, or does it seem reasonable to ask this?