Can a Funeral Home Personalize My Service?

You may want a personalized funeral at a Roanoke, VA funeral home for yourself or for your loved one who has died. While in the past, funerals and funeral services tended to follow a well-defined format, more and more people are breaking with the old traditions and want funerals and funeral services that feel more personal. 

The funeral home is able to meet any wishes you have to personalize your own or a loved one’s funeral and funeral service. As more people look to move away from a somber funeral service of mourning a loss to a celebratory service that honors the life of the loved one who has died, funeral homes are equipped to make sure the funeral service and the funeral itself focuses on life and not death. 

Almost a three-quarters of Americans who were surveyed about their thoughts on death and funerals indicated that they didn’t want a traditional funeral. They believed that the traditional funeral service and funeral process was depressing and sad because it focused on the loss of their loved one. 

This group – the majority of Americans – believed that a funeral service and the funeral process should instead focus of the life that they or their deceased loved one lived. They wanted the unique character, qualities, and impact that they or their loved one had to be the main focus of the funeral, not the fact that they died and left grief and mourning and loss behind them. 

Many people are opting for a funeral that is a party of celebration. They want all the elements of a party: friends, family, food, music, drinks, and flowers. In the midst of this party, memories of their lives or the lives of their loved ones who died would be shared and celebrated. 

Traditional funerals and funeral services are also becoming more personalized due to practical matters. Many cemeteries and graveyards are at or near full capacity, so traditional burials are often no longer an option for your or your loved one’s final disposition. 

With cremations on the rise in part because of this, the final resting places of loved ones become a personalized choice. 

Their cremation remains may be placed in urns (family members may keep keepsake urns, where a small portion of the deceased loved one’s remains are put) that can be specialized in almost any way you can imagine. 

The cremation remains may be scattered, or they may be stored in a columbarium niche or even buried in a cemetery’s urn garden. 

Cremation allows for great personalization of how a loved one’s remains are preserved for the family, and the funeral home can advise you of these and also make full arrangements for any method you choose. 

Personalization of funerals and funeral services is a forte of funeral homes because many people have decided they don’t want a religious component in the funeral process. In 2019 data obtained by the Pew Research Center, researchers found that only 65% of Americans profess to having a religious affiliation, and less than 50% attend any church on a regular basis. 

Because of this decline in attachment to organized religion, Americans now are choosing more secular services. They may opt for a family member or a family friend to officiate the funeral service (in some cases, funeral directors may be chosen to do this), and they omit any type of spiritual or religious references from the funeral and funeral service. 

For information on personalizing funerals at a Roanoke, VA funeral home, our compassionate and experienced staff at Conner-Bowman Funeral Home & Crematory is here to help.