G Seller and Co - Andy Eeley & Joe Clarke-Ferridge
There are many things to consider when a loved one passes away, and we can often find ourselves following tradition, or choosing the most popular options. Did you know there are many ways in which to personalise the funeral of your loved one, or even when planning ahead and recording your own funeral wishes. This episode discusses the multitude of ways that a funeral can be personlised, from venues to transport, music and many other ideas.
There are many things to consider when a loved one passes away, and we can often find ourselves following tradition, or choosing the most popular options. Did you know there are many ways in which to personalise the funeral of your loved one, or even when planning ahead and recording your own funeral wishes. This episode discusses the multitude of ways that a funeral can be personlised, from venues to transport, music and many other ideas.
Hi. Welcome to the latest episode of Lifting The Lid. My name is Andy Eeley. I'm a Senior Funeral Director with G Seller Independent Funeral Directors and we've been serving bereaved families since 1910. I'm sure you are well aware there's lots of myths, misconceptions and taboos around what happens behind the scenes within the funeral profession. So we've decided to put together this series of podcasts to try and dispel some of those myths and, of course, answer any questions. So please, please do like, share and subscribe and ask those questions. Send us an email liftingthelid@gseller.co.uk and we will do our absolute best to answer them for you. It genuinely is Our Family Caring For Your Family. So today I'm joined with my colleague Joe, my co-host. Hello, Joe. Hello, So we're going to talk about personalisation, how can we personalise and make the funeral about you and your loved one? There's lots and lots of things we can talk about here, lots of different things about. A venue for starters, we start simply with that. I mean, we don't have to have a crematorium or church. No, absolutely people think immediately don't they, where would you like your funeral service, I'll go to the local crematorium, or, like you say, a church of whatever faith. All sorts of different options. I mean, we have our own Service Chapel, of course you can utilise that. Absolutely. But I've done services, I've done a service in someone's barn before now, a farmer who passed away. You've had services in some unusual places. Yes, I've had a motor sport circuit, Mallory Park, our local circuit. A similar thing, we've had services in fields, haven't we, as well? I think it's quite important, something that you mentioned there about people seem to naturally assume that we have to have a local venue, a local crematom. It doesn't have to be, does it? It can be absolutely anywhere. And that's just the venue. So there's transport, getting there, a hearse is a tradition, but again, we're not restricted to just... Again, people think of a motor hearse I mean, we have a Mercedes motor hearse, but of course it could be a horse drawn hearse. It doesn't have to just be black horses the people we use have white horses, grey horses, carriages to match. They can be different colours. The plumes on the horses can be different colours. Personalisation areas, really. It can be absolutely about that individual. Tanks, I've seen a tank hearse, motorcycles, Land Rover. You've ridden on a motorcycle hearse haven't you? I have, yeah. One more and I think I get a trophy. I remember we used a trailer for a hearse once. So again, a farmer, the coffin went on to back of a trailer. As long as it's safe and we can work out practically how to do it, then there's no real limit to it. Absolutely. And of course, the route to the venue as well, we can keep that... That can be personal. So if there's a particular... I've passed and paused at pubs, bookies, all sorts of different places. Perhaps an old house or school or place of work. It's quite important to have the route that's suitable as well. And again, it doesn't have to be en-route to the place where the venue is. It can be a little bit out of the way. We'll work out how to get there and then we can make our way to the service venue from there, can't we? I think it's just important to have that pause, doff of cap and then carry on. I think we've also had...the Mallory Park that we were talking about. I actually played the deceased's favourite music on that journey. So in the hearse, we had Metallica blaring out, so it was all very different. I mean, talking about music, that's quite important. That really is personalisation, isn't it? I think 1% of people actually know what they want music wise, or what they want for their funerals, don't they? You consider what music you want for yours? Yeah, absolutely. So when I was born, Ashes to Ashes, David Bowie was number one. So I'm thinking that, but maybe an instrumental version of it. I didn't realise the song was that old, Andy What about you? I've got to be honest, I am one of those 1%, I've not really thought about it, but as a Doctor Who fan, I've always quite fancied having the sound of the TARDIS as the curtains close around me. Not much to say about that? We'll leave that there, we move on. I mean, we have all sorts, don't we? So more often than not, it's a similar sort of music, Gerry and the Pacemakers, You'll Never Walk Alone. If you've got Formula One fans it's The Chain, but only the last 20 seconds. Last 20 seconds on a continual loop. Really, really important stuff. And it's the same with, you know, hymns as well, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, traditional hymns, Abide With Me, The Lord Is My Shepherd. We're filming this at a time recently when the Queen's funeral, of course has just been. There are some hymns that probably people don't necessarily know. You can have whatever type of hymn option you like. There's a lot of old Methodist hymns that people might not know, but some great tunes. Yeah, we don't have to necessarily sing them as well. To complement the congregation, is quite nice to have a choir singing that we sing along too. Certainly, if nothing absolutely drowns out my voice. As I say, complement the congregation is a nice way of saying if you don't listen to people sing, we can get versions of tracks that have got choirs already on there. But there's all sorts of things we can have. Personal, dove releases, balloon releases, you know, balloon releases really important. Perhaps a younger person's funeral. It's quite a nice thing to do. Sometimes we see numbers of balloons that are the same age as opposed to 10 balloons, you know, 37. General rule is, you know, if you go into an arrangement with people and, you know, you can let us know what you want. We'll do our very best to try and organise it. If you ask us to have a flyover, you know, we'll do our very best to try and organise it. Can't say it's not going to cost something. But of course, you know, we'll do our very best to try and sort out whatever your wishes are, make it as personal as we possibly can. Coffin choice really important. So of course we offer the traditional kind of wooden coffins, American caskets, but there's a lot of themed ones now and then we can have different colours, different designs, photographs of your loved one. Family, important thing. I've had a bottle of wine, in fact, it was a bottle of wine in a basket and the family asked if we could kind of tip things up so they could see the wine on the top. Obviously it wasn't really feasible to do that. But instead of using catafalque at the crematorium, we placed on trestles in the middle of the crematorium so you could see. There's all sorts of different designs, but also different makes of coffin. You got wicker, cardboard, the seagrass wall, you can have pretty much, the coffin range is just so wide these days. Absolutely it can be pretty much anything you wish. Personal as we can make it. Funeral stationery, of course, as well. Orders of Service. So I'm always about making it bespoke. At G Seller, we have a series of templates, but I always say to use those as a guide. Let's make this as personal as possible. I refer to one that's got a lovely photograph of the individual and then a photograph of a field behind. But why can't we make that somewhere important for that individual? So perhaps a beach or somewhere that's important to them? The back garden, maybe? Lots of different we can extend that further. So we can have bookmarks, books of remembrance. Books of remembrance. Condolence, portraits, memory boards. Lots and lots of different things that we can have. Attendance cards, of course, as well. We can make them personal. Absolutely. And we with personalisation options, of course, as well. You know, media is so important these days, especially sort of in COVID times, streaming services became really, really relevant, didn't it? And a lot of places really built this into their system. So our Service Chapel included, you can have a service where we can stream the service live. It's recorded, it can be played back at another time. Absolutely. That's important for people logging in from elsewhere as well. Australia, Spain and we can do some other things on the media level. Music it's quite nice to have some pictures to go with that music. So we often put together show reels for people. So family send photographs in, we put a show reel together, play out to the music, and it all choreographs at times nicely. And it's just a bit of time to reflect. Recommend the amount of photos for the piece of music. Absolutely. 30, 35 photos. So it's not scrolling too quickly or equally a little bit too slow as well. We don't want that. But no, it's it's there's just so much just so much we can do. I think we're only really touching on it, to be honest. With personalisation as I said, really, if you come to us and you say what you want, we will do our very best to make that happen. And we've only covered a small, like you say. Absolutely. It carries on to cremated remains. The journey doesn't need to end at just the hearse. So we can offer things cremated remains going up into space on a balloon, a weather balloon, we've seen things like that and tattoos, all sorts of different things. It's about you and what's important to you. It's really important we get that right for the family that we're looking after. Absolutely. Thank you, Joe. No problem. Thank you. So, thank you for joining us again. Any questions, anything at all, anything you want us to go into a bit more detail on, please, absolutely. Please email us. liftingthelid@gseller.co.uk and carry on like, share and subscribe and we'll see you next time. Thank you.