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What's Involved in Holding a Funeral at Home?

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Planning a funeral for a loved one involves making a great number of decisions during what is an extremely upsetting and unsettling time. One of the major decisions is just where to hold the funeral service. A church will be inappropriate if your loved one wasn't religious, and you may find a funeral chapel to be too impersonal. And then a logical solution presents itself—why not have the funeral at home? At-home funeral services offer a way to personalize what will be a very important day. It can feel correct to celebrate a life in the place where that life was lived. But what is actually involved in holding a funeral at home?

As Hands-On As You Like

There's no universal approach to holding a funeral at a private home. You can be as hands-on as you like, but taking care of every aspect of funeral preparation may prove to be too difficult. You might simply feel uncomfortable handling your loved one's remains yourself—dressing them, arranging them in the casket, and not to mention actually moving the casket as needed. There are also health and safety considerations, as human remains must be properly stored in a suitably cold environment.

Offsite Preparations 

It's likely to be a better bet to liaise with a funeral director to assist you with the process. This means that most preparations take place offsite, at the funeral home. Your loved one will be dressed and groomed (which is relevant for an open casket service) before being placed in their casket and transported to the home where the service is to take place. Once the at-home service has concluded (the content and order of which is up to you), your loved one's casket will be collected and respectfully transported back to the funeral home to await burial or cremation.

A More Cost-Effective Option

Utilizing a funeral home to make the necessary preparations will incur a fee, and if the cost of this service is an obstacle, you could instead decide to have your loved one cremated. This avoids the need for most preparations of your loved one's remains, since you'll only be receiving an ornamental urn containing their ashes.

While there's nothing stopping you from making all the funeral plans yourself, you may prefer to have your home just be the site of the service itself, with the guest of honor's preparations and transportation handled by a funeral home.

To find out more, contact a service such as Griffin Wright Funeral Home.


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