FAQ
Confused where to begin, looking for a guarantee that planning your funeral will turn out the way you want, stressed with too many questions and need some clarity?
We have provided some detailed answers to common questions we are asked on a daily basis.
We are here to help answer your concerns and provide helpful information in a step by step way to guide you through the whole process.
Funerals fill an important role for those mourning the loss of a loved one. By providing surviving family and friends with an atmosphere of care and support in which to share thoughts and feelings about death, funerals are the first step in the healing process.
It is the traditional way to recognize the finality of death. Funerals are recognised rituals for the living to show their respect for the dead and to help survivors begin the grieving process.
- Pick up the deceased and transport the body to the funeral home (anytime day or night)
- Notify proper authorities, family and/or relatives
- Arrange and prepare death certificates
- Provide certified copies of death certificates for insurance and benefit processing
- Prepare and submit obituary to the newspapers of your choice
- Prepare the body for viewing including dressing
- Assist the family with funeral arrangements and purchase of casket, urn, burial vault and cemetery plot
- Schedule the opening and closing of the grave with cemetery personnel, if a burial is to be performed
- Coordinate with clergy if a funeral or memorial service is to be held
- Order funeral sprays and other flower arrangements as the family wishes
- Provide Aftercare, or grief assistance, to the bereaved
The funeral director will help coordinate arrangements with the cemetery.
- Bring the following information to complete the State vital statistic requirements:
- Contact a funeral director. Decide on time and place of funeral or memorial service. This can be done at the funeral home.
- The funeral director will assist you in determining the number of copies of the death certificates you will be needing and can order them for you.
- Make a list of immediate family, close friends and employer or business colleagues. Notify each by phone.
- Decide on appropriate memorial to which gifts may be made (church, hospice, library, charity or school).
- Gather obituary information you want to include such as age, place of birth, cause of death, occupation, college degrees, memberships held, military service, outstanding work, list of survivors in immediate family. Include time and place of services. The funeral home will normally write article and submit to newspapers.
Cremation involves incinerating the body within a matter of hours into ashes.
Cremation is the most popular choice nowadays due to the simpler process involved which is viewed as economical, saves on ground space and generally cost effective.
A traditional burial is where the body is placed into the ground and buried to allow the process of a natural decomposition.
Burial in a coffin is the most common method of disposing of remains. Cremation is increasingly selected because it can be less expensive and allows for the memorial service to be held at a more convenient time in the future when relatives and friends can come together.
A funeral service followed by cremation need not be any different from a funeral service followed by a burial. Usually, cremated remains are placed in urn before being committed to a final resting place. The urn may be scattered or kept by the family.
Current figures suggest that over 75% of all funerals are cremations.
When compared to other major life events like births and weddings, funerals are not expensive. A wedding costs at least three times as much; but because it is a happy event, wedding costs are rarely criticized. A funeral home is a 24-hour, labor-intensive business, with extensive facilities (viewing rooms, chapels, limousines, hearses, etc.), these expenses must be factored into the cost of a funeral.
Additionally, the cost of a funeral includes not only merchandise, like caskets, but the services of a funeral director in making arrangements; filing appropriate forms; dealing with doctors, florists, newspapers and others; and seeing to all the necessary details. Funeral directors look upon their profession as a service, but it is also a business.