Planning your own funeral: what to write down

Most of the difficulty families face in arranging a funeral comes from not knowing what the person wanted.

They then argue, guess, and spend more than necessary because spending feels like the safe option.

Writing it down is the cheapest and most useful thing on this site.

Where to write it

Not in the will. Wills are frequently not read until after the funeral, and in most jurisdictions funeral wishes in a will are not legally binding anyway.

A separate document, stored somewhere findable, with your executor and family told where it is.

A single page is enough. Date it.

What to cover

Burial or cremation, or another option. The most important single item, and the one families most often do not know.

What should happen with ashes, if cremated. Kept, scattered, buried, divided. Where specifically, and whether you mind if the family choose differently.

Whether you want a service, and what kind — religious, secular, or none.

Where, if you have a preference.

Who should conduct it, if you have someone in mind.

Music, which people frequently have strong views about and rarely record. Specific pieces, and any you would hate.

Readings or poems.

Who you would like to speak, though it is kind to say that nobody should feel obliged.

Flowers or donations, and to which charity.

Dress code, if you care. A remarkable number of people specify no black, and families like having permission.

Whether there should be a gathering afterwards, and roughly what kind.

Who should be told. A list of people outside the immediate family who might otherwise be missed — old colleagues, distant friends, people from a club. This is genuinely useful and frequently forgotten.

Anything you specifically do not want.

The sentence that matters most

Say explicitly what you want spent, and give permission to spend less.

Something like: "I do not want anyone spending more than is necessary. A simple arrangement is what I want and I would be unhappy if anyone went into debt or felt obliged to spend more to demonstrate anything."

Families need this permission. Without it, the cheapest option feels like a judgement on the person, and the funeral director's suggestion of something better is very difficult to decline while grieving.

I have read a great many price lists and spoken to a great many bereaved people, and this single sentence saves more money and more distress than anything else you can write.

How specific to be

There is a balance.

Too vague — "something simple" — leaves the family guessing.

Too prescriptive can create problems. A funeral serves the living as well as the dead, and a document dictating every detail can prevent the family from doing what they need to.

The useful middle: be clear about the things you genuinely care about, and explicitly flexible about the rest.

"I would like to be cremated. The music matters to me and I have listed it. Everything else is up to you, and please do whatever helps you."

The things people wish they had known

From families I have spoken to, the questions that come up repeatedly:

Did they want to be buried with anyone, or in a particular place?

Did they want a religious service? Families are frequently uncertain about someone's actual beliefs, particularly where practice had lapsed.

Were there people who should be invited who nobody knew about?

Was there anything they wanted read or said?

What should happen to their possessions — not the valuable ones, which the will covers, but the objects with meaning.

Should the funeral be private or open?

Tell people as well as writing it

A document nobody knows about does nothing.

Tell your executor, tell your family, and give a copy to at least one person. Mention it once, in an ordinary conversation, and that is sufficient.

If raising it feels difficult, the easiest opening is practical: "I've written down what I'd like for my funeral, it's in the desk drawer, and I don't want to talk about it now but I wanted you to know it's there."

That sentence takes ten seconds and does the entire job.

Update it

Views change. Music you loved at forty may not be what you want at seventy. People named may have died or moved away.

Look at it every few years. Put the date on each version and discard the old one.

If you want no fuss at all

Say so explicitly, and say what you would like instead, because a family told to do nothing frequently feels adrift.

Direct cremation with a gathering later, arranged by them however they want, is a common and workable answer, and it costs a fraction of the alternative.

Say that too.

Funeral wishes are generally not legally binding. The person with legal authority to arrange the funeral differs by jurisdiction. Telling that person what you want is what makes it happen.