What to Include in a Funeral Plan
A funeral plan is highly personal and will vary for each person. Religious beliefs, family and community customs and individual preferences will influence your decisions about what to include in your funeral plan. In general, these are some of the items to consider when creating your plan:
- Your preferred method of care: home or mortuary
- Your religious organization (or any relevant affinity-based membership)
- Any military discharge information
- Details about your funeral or memorial service, including whether you want a service or a viewing
- Whether you want your body to be present at your funeral or memorial service and whether the casket should be open or closed
- Suggestion about who you would like to serve as pallbearers and who you would like to deliver the eulogy
- Requests for special readings, music and refreshments
- How you want your remains handled (burial, cremation or donated to science)
- Whether or not you want your body to be embalmed (affects the memorial service)
- For burial – the type of casket you want and where you want to be interred
- For cremation – the type of container you want and any wishes you have for the final disposition of your ashes (buried, stored or scattered)
- The clothing and jewelry you want to be wearing when buried or cremated
- Any wishes you have for a grave marker or other memorial
- Whether you want an obituary published and what you want it to include
- Charitable organizations that you would like to ask loved ones, friends and acquaintances to donate to in honor of your memory
Your funeral plan should be written in the form of a letter and left with a trusted family member or friend. If you have prepaid for a funeral or cemetery plot, the details should be included in your funeral plan.
The non-profit Funeral Consumers Alliance offers a funeral planning kit that includes a 16-page booklet that guides you through the creation of a funeral plan. The kit is available for $12 at the Funeral Consumer Alliance website.
Catie W.
December 20, 2010
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