Tips for Planning a Cremation

Has someone in your family recently passed away, and you are in charge of planning their funeral service and cremation? Maybe you have never had to deal with funeral arrangements after an older family member passed away before, so you need some tips to help guide you? Perhaps you are just beginning a job as a funeral home director, and want to learn more about the cremation process? If this sounds like you, then read on to learn more helpful information. This article will attempt to break down a few tips for planning cremation and funeral for your loved one. There are lots of people who prefer to be cremated, rather than receive a full burial, and it is important to honor those requests. The information contained in the following paragraphs should provide you with a good starting point. 

Budget

Something that many people do not realize about planning funerals and cremations is that the process can actually be extremely expensive and cost tens of thousands of dollars. If you don’t have any kind of life insurance then it can be very expensive to pay for an entire funeral or cremation, so you should always try and keep your life insurance up to date. Even if you don’t have life insurance to cover the cost of cremation, there are still some ways that you can save money. Using a current family plot can save you from paying thousands of dollars for a brand new one in a cemetery, and many locations will allow you to bury a cremation urn on top of an existing full burial. 

Timeline

A huge concern for anyone who wants to get their loved one cremated can be the timelines between the death and actual cremation. Sometimes due to demand, crematoriums can experience a huge influx of business, which means you might have to wait to get your loved one cremated. There are other instances in which getting cremated might make it easier for your family to plan a funeral service for you since there is no reason to rush a funeral service after your loved one has already been cremated. 

Urn

One of the most important decisions you must make when making arrangements for your loved one to be cremated is the type of cremation urn that you plan to use. The cremation urn is an incredibly important part of planning any cremation because it is actually the vessel into which your friend or family member’s ashes will be placed after they have actually been cremated. There are a huge number of different styles of cremation urn which are available, so you will need to find one which you think your loved one would approve of. Cremation urn designers recommend you go to their website in order to get some information and samples of different styles of cremation urns which might help you to make a decision. Since there are such a wide variety of different options, you should have no problem finding something which is the perfect fit. 

Service

The actual funeral service is often the biggest part of any celebration of life for your loved one and can provide family members and friends with the last chance to say goodbye. Depending on the person who passed away, this service might include some kind of religious ceremony, or a few family members speaking to the crowd. Many funeral homes have rooms that are designed specifically to accommodate crowds for a visitation or in-house service for your loved one. 

Wishes

There have never been so many options for people to choose from when deciding what they want to do with their family member or loved one’s ashes following a cremation. There are now ways that you can have these ashes turned into a diamond, or even shot into space aboard a rocket ship. No matter what your loved one’s dying wish was, there should be a way to make it happen if you know where to look. 

After exploring some of the different information included in this article, the hope is that you have come away with a better sense of the different tips that can help you plan a cremation and funeral for your loved one. Be sure to explore your different options such as burial insurance and funeral home providers in order to ensure that every single aspect of the cremation and funeral for your loved one are done correctly. Planning a cremation does not need to be any harder than a conventional burial, and often encompasses many of the same hurdles which you will need to overcome. This article is by no means comprehensive, so be sure to look for some additional tips online to help you answer any lingering questions.