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It is always difficult to experience the loss of a loved one, whether expected after a long illness or a sudden loss you were totally unprepared for. Unless your loved one left instructions on what they would like, everything may be left up to you do decide. What kind of Celebration of Life service and post-service gathering would best honor them? Do you need to have a service and celebration in the immediate future, or can you have the body buried or cremated days before the actual event? This is where you start. Following is some advice on how you can plan a celebration of life that truly captures the essence of who that person was and what they meant to the people in their life.

Book Locations for the Service and Celebration

If your loved one was a member of a church, finding a location for the service probably won’t be difficult. The pastor or minister who will be leading the service is probably affiliated with the church that the recently deceased attended. It could be that it had been years since they attended any type of formal services, but they always expressed a desire to have a service within their chosen faith.

This is common among fallen-away Catholics because the funeral rite is the last of the seven sacraments in the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Since you have probably made a list of those people you intend to invite, you would take that number when booking a venue for the post-service celebration. Once that is locked down, it’s time to send out invitations.

What Kind of Service Would Your Loved One Want?

Before you can send out invitations, you will need to decide on the type of service that would make your loved one happy if they were alive to experience it. There are various themes you can choose between on a site like Greenvelope that are all in digital format. Their celebration of life invitations can be viewed quite easily online to help you compare them side by side. In this way it is easier to choose the one that best honors the passing of your loved one. Once you have chosen the invitation you like best and have seen to the details listed below, you can simply edit them online and email to the recipients.

Invitations with an RSVP can be sent in digital format and are often preferable to those you could have printed. The benefits of doing it this way are many, but time is the most important factor. They don’t call it snail mail for nothing! You can email a link to an online celebration of life invitation that can be viewed and responded to right then and there.

Contact the Person You Would Like to Lead the Celebration

Next on the list is to contact the person you would like to lead the celebration of life and anyone who may want to do a reading or give some sort of eulogy. The one thing to bear in mind here is that certain people may be better suited to being a part of the actual service. For example, if your loved one was a member of a church, you would probably want people who shared a common faith to read scriptures, for example. Once you have found the people central to the actual service, you can move on to the next thing to consider.

Have a Program and Memorial Cards Printed

These are things you will want to have printed, however, because they are important to the service and as a memorial that can be kept in a wallet, for example. The program will have any readings included as well as the order of the service and people who took part in reading or eulogizing the departed. As for memorial cards, these are often small cards the size of playing cards and they have important dates printed as a remembrance of this day. The facer of the memorial card could have a picture, poem, or scripture verse while the back side would list things like the birth and death years as well as any information you would like remembered.

It isn’t always going to be easy for you, but the process of planning a celebration of life helps you to come to terms with the passing of one you held so dear. It is perfectly okay to inject a bit of who you are and what that person meant to you personally but on the whole, the focus is on the life and passing of the one you are celebrating today. In the end, the one thing you can hold onto is the fact that you are celebrating a life lived and loved and not a death to be mourned.

Photo by Pavel Danilyuk: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-man-sitting-on-the-bench-7317763/