When a loved one passes away, it's natural to want to memorialise them as best you can. At the same time, you may find yourself working within a budget. Fortunately, there are ways to hold a memorial service on a budget while keeping it special.
Simplify the Casket
The right funeral director won't push you to buy an unnecessarily expensive casket. The best ones offer a wide range, including simple versions that are ideal for staying within your budget. You may find it useful to shop around different funeral directors and ask them to itemise their prices before making your final decision.
Choose a Local Funeral Director
You may find yourself choosing between a funeral director who works for a franchise and someone who owns a local business. Although there's no guarantee that local directors will have lower prices, there's a good chance that they will. They may also have strong relationships with other local businesses that allow you to access lower prices for additional funeral costs. For example, flowers and printing the order of service.
Consider Choosing Cremation
Most people will find themselves choosing between cremation and burial. Usually, cremations cost less. However, you still need to honour religious preferences or the deceased's personal convictions. If they had a strong preference towards one rather than the other, choose that.
Use Internet Invitations
It's often useful to take a few small costs and find ways to make them cheap, or even free. Invitations are a great example of this. Rather than spending money on printing and mailing them, use social media sites to create an event or free memorial sites. Using Internet invitations makes it easier for you to track who is and isn't attending too.
Ditch (Most of) the Flowers
Although it was once fashionable to use large flower displays at funerals, today a lot of people are turning away from them. You can enjoy a beautiful memorial service by choosing a simple display and asking those who attend to donate to a cause instead. You may even find that raising money for charity is comforting.
Host the Wake at Home
If you're planning on holding a wake, you can cut a lot of costs by hosting it at your property rather than heading to a venue. You can use a catering service to make buffet food and ask your friends and family to help with cleaning up afterwards. By hosting the wake at home, you can also avoid placing a time limit on how long the celebrations last.
For help planning a funeral, contact a funeral director near you.
Share30 March 2021
Irving Berlin famously sang, "The song is ended, but the melody lingers on..." Anyone who has been in charge of funeral arrangements knows the importance of striking the delicate balance between reverence and celebration which helps us remember the true heart of a person. We admire incredible examples of funerals that faithfully commemorate a person's life such as those for Nelson Mandela and Joan Rivers. Unfortunately, funerals for our own loved ones often end up being generic or "cookie cutter" because sadness overwhelms us. This blog is designed to help by outlining the ways that funeral directors can personalise a service and providing imaginative ideas.