A Guide to Successful Funeral Planning

About 2.8 million Americans die each year. The families of these people choose to hold funerals for them in most cases.

If you recently experienced a death in your family, you might be getting ready to start the funeral planning process right now. But you might also be dreading it because you don’t know the first thing about how to plan a funeral.
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Don’t worry. It’s not that difficult to plan a funeral for a loved one as long as you take the time to familiarize yourself with the process. Learning the funeral basics will allow you to make funeral plans for your loved one in no time at all.

Today, we’re going to walk you through the different steps that you’ll need to take during funeral planning. It should make you feel a little less stressed out about piecing together the plans for your loved one’s funeral.

Here is a guide to successful funeral planning.

Begin by Finding a Funeral Home That You Trust

As of right now, there are roughly 19,000 funeral homes operating throughout the country. This should include at least a few funeral homes in your general area.

Before doing anything else as far as funeral planning is concerned, you should pick out a funeral home to hold your loved one’s funeral at. It should be a reputable funeral home that you know you can trust. They’ll be able to supply you with a great funeral director who can help you.

If you end up working with the wrong funeral home, it’s going to make funeral planning so much more challenging than it has to be. It’s why you should consider everything from a funeral home’s experience level to a funeral home’s costs prior to picking them over all your other options.

Choose Between Burying Your Loved One and Cremating Them

Once you know which funeral home you’re going to work with while going through the funeral planning process, you and your family should spend some time thinking about whether you want to bury your loved one or cremate them.

In a perfect world, your loved one will have let you know which option they wanted you to choose. But if they didn’t, it’ll be up to you to make a final decision with regards to which side of the fence you’ll fall on.

In the past, most families chose to bury their loved ones. But nowadays, the cremation rate has risen dramatically as more and more families have opted to go with cremating their loved ones.

You’re more than welcome to go with either option. But you will have to try and make a decision sooner rather than later.

Decide What Kind of Funeral Service to Hold for Your Loved One

Regardless of whether you and your family are going to bury your loved one or cremate them, you should always attempt to hold a funeral service of some kind for them.

Some families decide to hold traditional funerals for their loved ones before their burials or cremations. Others choose to go with memorial services for their loved ones after their burials or cremations.

But whatever you do, you shouldn’t pass up on the chance to stage some kind of funeral for your loved one. It’ll give you an opportunity to say your goodbyes to them, and it’ll also jumpstart the healing process so that you don’t get stuck on one of the early stages of grief for an extended period of time.

Customize Your Loved One’s Funeral as Best You Can

If you’re going to plan a funeral for a loved one, you should do more than just hold an average, run-of-the-mill funeral for them. You should go all out if you can and make it unique to them.

How can you do this? Well, for starters, you can handpick each and every reading and song that is used during the funeral. You should try to find readings and songs that either remind you of your loved one or that your loved one really liked.

You should also try to incorporate photos and videos of your loved one into their funeral if you can. It’ll add a personal touch to the funeral and put the celebration of your loved one’s life over the top.

It’s not going to be easy to customize your loved one’s funeral. But with the right funeral director by your side, you should be able to do it without a problem.

Put Together an Obituary for Your Loved One

In the days following the death of a loved one, you’re going to want to let the world knowing about their passing. You can do this by creating an obituary for them.

Writing an obituary is actually way harder than it looks. Even though most obituaries are on the shorter side, you have to find a way to sum up a person’s life in just a few paragraphs. So it’s not as easy as you might think!

But you can do it with the assistance of your funeral director. You should include a bunch of key things in your loved one’s obituary like:

• Your loved one’s name and age
• Your loved one’s hometown and the place they lived in when they died
• Your loved one’s deceased and surviving family members
• Your loved one’s education and work information
• Your loved one’s hobbies and passions

You should also make sure that you finish your loved one’s obituary off by sharing info about their upcoming funeral. It’ll ensure that plenty of people show up for it and make all the funeral planning that you’re doing worth it.

Pick Out a Casket or Urn for Your Loved One

If you’re going to bury your loved one, you’ll have to place their body into a casket first. This means that you’ll have to spend some time shopping around for a casket, preferably through your funeral home.

Funeral homes often have a wide range of caskets available. They can set you up with everything from simple wood caskets to decorative bronze ones.

Funeral homes can also provide families with urns for their loved one’s cremated remains if they’re going to go through the cremation process. These remains will be put into the urn of their choice as soon as their cremation is complete.

You might be tempted to simply pick out the first casket or urn that you can find for your loved one. But you should look around at your options and select the casket or urn that you think will fit your loved one best, figuratively speaking.

Figure Out How You’ll Pay for Your Loved One’s Funeral

Paying for a funeral for a loved one can be expensive. With this in mind, you should try to come up with a budget in advance so that you don’t spend more than you may have planned to on funeral planning.

You should also work with a funeral home that can extend affordable prices on funeral services to you so that you’re able to keep your costs low. Not all funeral homes are going to charge you the same prices for their services, which makes it important for you to shop around for the one that will fit into your budget.

Additionally, you might want to speak with an estate attorney about any estate planning your loved one did or even get information on wrongful death attorneys if your loved one died as a result of someone else’s actions. These could be good ways to foot the bill for the funeral planning you’re doing.

Seek Grief Counseling Services If You Need Them

Most people are filled with grief following the death of a loved one. They have so much grief built up inside of them that it can feel like it’s going to be almost impossible to get out of bed in the morning, much less do funeral planning.

If your loved one’s death is taking a deep emotional toll on you, you shouldn’t be shy about asking a funeral home if they can provide you with grief counseling services. These services will help you get a hold of your grief and keep your emotions in check. They can also put you on the right path when it comes to healing.

Use This Guide to Funeral Planning to Keep You on the Right Track

Funeral planning can be a difficult process for many families. It can be especially hard for those families who don’t know what they’re doing.

Now that you know how funeral planning works, you should be able to work your way through funeral planning without encountering too many problems. You can give your loved one the sendoff that they deserve and keep your expenses in check while you’re at it. It’ll provide you with an excellent experience overall and help you create some fond memories in the process.

Browse through the other articles posted on our blog for more funeral planning tips and tricks that will help you out during your dark days.