The funeral
Making the ceremony personal
Funeral ceremonies are a chance to remember good times, to enjoy the things that made your loved one special, and to hear tributes and stories from friends and family. There are many ways you can make a funeral ceremony a personal celebration of your loved one’s life.
Service sheets
Service sheets explain the order of the funeral service. They’re also an opportunity to celebrate your loved one’s life and a precious memento for family and friends.
Consider including photographs, memories, meaningful texts, poems, or your loved one’s own words. We can design the service sheet for you or help you with the process if you wish to create it yourself.
Visual presentations
A wonderful way to remember your loved one’s life is to create a slideshow of photos to be played at the funeral. This can be shown before, during, or after the ceremony.
We can help you compile a slideshow. Your funeral director will share our presentation guidelines to help you gather images. Sometimes families like to invite friends and colleagues to share their photographs too.
Music & movement
Meaningful music is a beautiful way to celebrate your loved one’s life. There are no rules. Our chapel has resonated to symphonies, operatic arias, the blues and rap. Live music is always special, and pipers or buglers create moments to remember.
You may also like to consider whether you would like movement, dancing or a guard of honour to be part of the ceremony.
Flowers
Flowers bring colour, scent and significance to a ceremony. Choose your loved one’s favourite flowers and colours or personalise arrangements with meaningful mementos.
We can arrange flowers for you, or you may wish to provide the flowers for the ceremony. Families can find this a soothing thing to do, especially if your loved one was a keen gardener.
Precious memories
Mementos
You can display things that were important to your loved one at the funeral venue or on their casket. People have shared flowers and vegetables from their garden, sports equipment and trophies, books and art, photographs, candles, and religious texts.
memorial book
A memorial book is a record of everyone who attended the funeral ceremony and a way to collect memories of your loved one. We can help you create a memorial book to match your service sheets, you can choose from a range of memorial books, or use your own.
Memorial donations
Often families request donations to a charity in place of gifts of flowers. If you would like to do this, we can help arrange donations in memory of your loved one through Memorial Gifting, a simple way for people to give online.
FUNERAL VEHICLES
We can provide transport to and from the funeral in our fleet of kia hearses and cars, which includes modern Cadillacs and Jaguars.
We’re always happy to arrange bespoke transport for your loved one. You can also use your own vehicle, so if you’d like your loved one to take their last ride in their vintage pride and joy, we’ll do all we can to make it happen.
Arrange your pre-planning meeting
We’re here to guide you through all your choices and take care of all the details. Make a time to meet, and we’ll help you plan a funeral to suit your needs and honour your loved one.
We're here for you
If you need our help following the death of a loved one contact us any time of the day or night.
Christchurch (03) 379 9920
North Canterbury (03) 327 7499