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TIPS FOR PLANNING A FUNERAL
A funeral, religious or not, should be a celebration of the life of the deceased, a way of bringing people together and helping them to cope with their loss. Music will be played, and readings and speeches will be given.
Funerals tend to be a lot easier to organise if the deceased have made their wishes for the funeral service known beforehand. Discussing ones own demise with close relatives and friends may seem a little morbid, and in many cases, people prefer to make their wishes known by leaving written instructions with the funeral director. However, people often neglect to do this, and the bereaved are left to make their own plans for the ceremony. One way in which you can take the burden of arranging and paying for your funeral away from your relatives is to invest in a funeral plan with a company such as Legal & General, as this will ensure that your wishes are made clear and that there are funds available to put them into practice. Visit their website for more information on funeral plans.
There are several advantages to the traditional approach of hiring a minister, singing hymns, and reading passages from religious texts. Ministers tend to have a lot of experience in dealing with funerals, and tend to be fairly good at setting the tone for the ceremonies. Hymns tend to make good funeral music, as they are easy to sing along with and are comfortingly familiar to most people. Religious texts contain many passages that have been specifically written for funerals, and can be guaranteed to fit the sombre mood of a funeral. However, if the deceased was not a religious person, then these trappings can seem somewhat inappropriate, and alternatives will have to be found.
One alternative to singing hymns is to have some recorded or live music played. Musicians can be hired to play some appropriate pieces, or you can play music from a CD or MP3 player through the sound system. In religious funerals, the readings tend to be from a religious text such as the Bible or the Koran, but if this does not seem appropriate, then poems and selections from favourite secular books can also work well. |
