Celebration of Life Program
On this page
Two complete orders you can copy
Both are finished and ready to use. Every name, town and venue below is invented. Cut anything you do not want; nothing here holds up anything else.
Indoor celebration: about an hour
Grange hall, hotel room, church hall. Photographs out, no casket.
A CELEBRATION OF THE LIFE OF MARGARET “PEG” DELANEY May 2, 1948 – June 19, 2026
As you arrive Music, photographs on the long table, and the guest book by the door. Please write something in it, even one line.
Welcome Tom Delaney, her son
Peg’s life Frances Ochoa, her oldest friend
Reading From “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman Read by Nora Delaney, her granddaughter
Three people who knew her Ruth Kammerer, who ran the shop with her for twenty-two years Bill Ochoa, her neighbor since 1974 Katie Delaney-Pryor, her daughter
Music “Moon River” She played it on the porch every summer
Open floor If you have a story, come up. There is a microphone at the front. Keep it to a few minutes so everyone who wants a turn gets one.
Thank you Tom Delaney
Then: food
The tables are open and will stay open. Stay as long as you like.
Two things in that order are doing more work than they look. The line under the open floor sets a time limit without anyone having to enforce one, and the last block tells a room of people who do not know each other that the formal part is over. Without it, guests stand still and wait.
Outdoor celebration: about thirty-five minutes
Park pavilion, beach, backyard. Folding chairs or standing.
REMEMBERING ANDRES “ANDY” SOLIS 1959 – 2026
We will be outside for about half an hour, and then we will eat.
Welcome Marisol Solis
A few words about Andy Marisol Solis
Reading “Sea Fever” by John Masefield Read by Diego Solis
Two friends speak Wendell Carr, who fished with him for thirty years Priya Raman, from the shop
A minute of quiet For your own thoughts, or your own prayers
Music “Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay” Please stay where you are
Thank you, and please eat Marisol Solis
· · ·
There is shade under the big oak and water in the coolers. Restrooms are past the playground. If it rains we move to the pavilion and carry on.
Outdoors, print the practical lines. People will read the back of the program while they wait, and a sentence about restrooms and rain saves the host twenty separate conversations.
How long each part actually takes
| Element | How long | Who does it |
|---|---|---|
| Music while people arrive | 20–30 minutes before the start | One person with a playlist and a speaker, tested in the room |
| Welcome | 2 minutes | The host. Not usually the person grieving hardest. |
| The life story | 5–8 minutes | One prepared person, reading from paper, not from memory |
| A reading | 1–2 minutes | Anyone. Hand them the printed text, large type. |
| Prepared speakers | 3–5 minutes each, two or three of them | Asked in advance and told the limit out loud |
| Music in the middle | 3–4 minutes | Recorded is fine. Say on the page whether to stand. |
| Open floor | 10–20 minutes, and it will run long | The host, plus two people quietly asked to go first |
| Thanks and close | 2 minutes | The same host who opened |
| Food and standing around | As long as the venue allows | Somebody who is not in the immediate family |
Add those up and a full celebration of life is about an hour. Families routinely plan for two and then find themselves stretching to fill it. If you are choosing between one more speaker and thirty more minutes of people talking to each other over food, choose the food.
How it differs from a funeral program
A funeral program
Sits inside a service that already has a shape. The program helps guests follow it: when to stand, which hymn, which psalm, which response.
Formal headings, in the order the officiant expects. Processional, Invocation, Scripture, Eulogy, Committal, Benediction.
Held during the service, and often put down on the pew afterward.
A celebration of life program
There is no service underneath it, so the program is the only thing that says the afternoon has a plan. That makes it more important, not less.
Plain headings and first names. Welcome, Peg’s life, Three people who knew her, Open floor, Food.
Read while people wait, referred to during, and taken home afterward. Print for keeping.
The other real difference is timing. A funeral runs on the funeral home schedule, usually within a week. A celebration of life can be held whenever the family chooses, and choosing later is a legitimate decision rather than a delay. Six weeks out, people can fly in, the family is sleeping again, and the room is warmer.
If there was a private burial first, say so on the program in one line: Burial was private, at the family’s request. Guests who were not invited to it will otherwise spend the afternoon wondering whether they missed something.
For the traditional layout and headings, see funeral program format. If the gathering is a funeral in everything but name and you want the usual structure with the religious language stripped out, start from the non-religious funeral program instead.
What goes on each panel
Nearly every celebration of life program is one sheet of letter paper folded once, giving four panels of 5.5 by 8.5 inches. That is enough room for everything below without crowding, and it can be printed at home in the morning if it comes to that.
| Panel | What goes on it | Roughly how much |
|---|---|---|
| Front | One photograph, the name they were called, the two years, and the date and place of the gathering | A photo plus about 25 words |
| Inside left | The life in short: where they were born, the work, the marriage, and the two or three things everyone knew about them | 150–250 words |
| Inside right | The order: who speaks, in what sequence, what the music is, and where the food is | 100–150 words |
| Back | Thank you, donations if you are asking for any, the family request (send us your photos, wear color), and where to write stories down | 80–120 words |
Two placement notes worth knowing. Put a second photograph on the back panel if you have one; it roughly doubles how many people keep the program rather than recycling it. And keep the inside right panel short enough to read at a glance from a seat, because that is the only panel anyone reads under pressure.
Funeral program sizes covers how many words genuinely fit on each fold, and what to include in a funeral program has the full checklist if you want to be sure nothing is missing.
Cover, inside and back wording
Celebration covers do better with warmth than with formality. The most useful thing you can put under the name is a sentence that tells people what kind of afternoon this is.
Cover options
Five covers, in descending order of formality
A Celebration of the Life of MARGARET “PEG” DELANEY May 2, 1948 – June 19, 2026 Harmon Grange Hall · Saturday, July 11, 2026 · 2:00 p.m.
· · ·
REMEMBERING PEG 1948 – 2026 Saturday, July 11 at the Grange. Bring a story.
· · ·
FOR ANDY SOLIS 1959 – 2026 Come as you are. He would have.
· · ·
A GATHERING FOR RUTH ANNE KIMBALL who would have hated the fuss 1934 – 2026
· · ·
PEG May 2, 1948 – June 19, 2026
The inside left panel is the short life. It is not the obituary and it does not need to list every survivor. Two hundred words that sound like the person will do more than four hundred that sound like a resume.
Inside left: the short life
193 words
Peg Delaney was born Margaret Ruth Fenwick on May 2, 1948, in Ashfield, Vermont, the middle of five children and the only one who could be relied upon to tell you what she thought.
She married Walter Delaney in 1969 and they moved to Corvallis with a car full of records and no plan. She meant to stay two years. She stayed fifty-seven.
For twenty-two years she ran Fenwick & Kammerer, the fabric shop on Third, with her friend Ruth. Half the town learned to sew at that counter. She kept a stool behind the register for anyone who wanted to sit and talk, and it was almost never empty.
Peg swam at the pool every weekday morning at six. She grew dahlias that were too big for their bed and gave them away in coffee cans. She wrote actual letters. She was blunt in a way that people came to depend on, because whatever she told you was true.
Walter died in 2019. She kept his chair where it was and stopped apologizing for it.
Peg died at home on June 19, 2026, with Tom and Katie there and the window open.
The back panel carries thanks and instructions. Keep it to three short blocks so it can be read standing up with a plate in one hand.
Back panel: thanks, requests and what happens next
Three blocks, in this order
THANK YOU
Thank you for coming today, and for every casserole, phone call and ride to the airport over the past six weeks. The family has been carried, and we know it.
Particular thanks to the staff at Willow Creek Home Health, who looked after Peg so that she could stay in her own house.
IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO GIVE SOMETHING
Peg would rather you gave it to the Corvallis Public Library, or to any hospice near you, than sent flowers.
BEFORE YOU GO
There are cards and pens on the table by the window. If you have a story about Peg, write it down and leave it in the basket. We are putting them all in a book for the grandchildren.
If you have photographs of her, email them to the address below. We would like every one you have.
That last block is the single best thing you can put on a celebration of life program. People arrive wanting to say something to the family and not finding the moment. A basket and a stack of cards gives them one, and the family ends up with something to read in November.
More phrasing for the thank-you paragraph is on funeral acknowledgement wording, and funeral program wording has cover lines and headings you can lift line by line.
Readings, music and the memory table
A celebration usually wants one reading rather than three, and it wants one that sounds like a person talking. This one is old enough to reprint in full on anything you like, and it reads well outdoors.
From Song of Myself, 52
Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
About forty-five seconds read aloud. Suits a gardener, a walker, or any gathering held outside.
Short lines for a cover, a card or a slide
“Life is mostly froth and bubble; two things stand like stone: kindness in another’s trouble, courage in your own.”
Adam Lindsay Gordon, Ye Wearie Wayfarer
Steady rather than sweet. Good on a back panel.
“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”
Sarah Williams, The Old Astronomer
Thirteen words, and it fits a card or a slide.
“That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.”
Emily Dickinson
The most quotable line on this list for a celebration.
“Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling.”
Walt Whitman, Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun
For someone who was happiest outdoors.
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”
Ecclesiastes 3:1, King James Version
Familiar without being churchy. Works at a mixed gathering.
“In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and the sharing of pleasures.”
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
Often read at celebrations where the friends outnumber the family.
Several poems families ask for at celebrations are still under copyright, and reading one aloud at a private gathering is not the same as reprinting it on a hundred programs. The safe approach is to print the title, the author and the reader, and leave the text off the page. Funeral poems marks which ones can be reprinted in full.
Music
A celebration is the one gathering where the music can be what the person actually listened to, at the volume they listened to it. Three pieces is the standard load: something as people come in, something in the middle, and something at the end.
The middle piece is the one to choose carefully. It plays in silence with nothing to look at, and it is where most of the crying happens. Some families want exactly that. Others put a slideshow behind it so people have somewhere to rest their eyes, which changes those three minutes completely. Either is a real choice. Print please stay seated or please join in underneath, or guests will not know what to do. Funeral hymns lists the traditional options if you want one of those too.
The memory table
Almost every celebration of life has one: photographs, a few objects, the guest book, and the cards people write on. It is worth twenty minutes of planning because it is where guests go when they do not know anyone.
Put the photographs in frames or under glass rather than loose, write names and years on the back of every one, and appoint somebody to collect the whole table at the end. Loose photographs at a large gathering go home in other people’s bags without any bad intention at all.
How long it runs, how many to print
Early afternoon is the easiest time to ask people to come. Two o’clock leaves the morning for travel, does not commit you to serving a meal, and lets guests who need to leave do so without it being obvious. An evening celebration works too, and tends to run longer and looser.
On print counts: a celebration is not a funeral, and couples and families share a program. A working figure is one program for every two expected guests, plus twenty-five to fifty spares. Use the top of that range if you plan to mail them, and keep at least ten of the spares back. The family will want one each, and one will end up in a frame.
Head counts for a celebration of life are less reliable than for a funeral, because the date is further out and nobody feels obliged. Ask for a rough reply, then plan food for fewer people and print programs for more. Programs are cheap and running out of them in front of a line at the door is the one shortage guests notice.
If you want something smaller to hand out or mail afterward, memorial cards covers the keepsake card that matches the program, and funeral program printing covers paper weight, folding and where to get it done in a day.
You are allowed to do this in a smaller way
A celebration of life has no required elements. That is the whole point of it, and it is also why families overbuild them. There is no liturgy telling you when to stop, so the planning expands to fill whatever energy you have, and you have very little.
So, plainly: a photograph, twenty people, one person saying a few words, and a table of food is a complete celebration of life. Nobody who comes will think it was thin. What people remember is who was in the room and whether they got to say something, not how many panels the program had.
Things you can cut without anyone noticing: the second reading, the third speaker, the printed photograph collage, the catered food, the slideshow, and the guest favors. Things worth keeping: someone who hosts, a way for guests to say something to the family, and enough chairs for the people who cannot stand for an hour.
If the layout is the part you would rather not do at 11 p.m., Reposa builds the whole program from your answers: the order of the afternoon, the short life story, the back-panel thanks, and matching cards, ready to print. Worked examples of finished programs are on celebration of life program examples, the fill-in-the-blank versions are on celebration of life program templates, and everything about the day itself is on how to plan a celebration of life.
Common questions
What is the difference between a celebration of life and a funeral?
Do you actually need a program for a celebration of life?
What do you call the order of service at a celebration of life?
How long should a celebration of life last?
Is it acceptable to hold a celebration of life months after the death?
What should the program say about what to wear?
Can a celebration of life include prayers or scripture?
Keep reading
- Celebration of Life Program TemplateCelebration of life program templates in a warmer, less formal style. Build one and download a print-ready PDF.
- Celebration of Life Program ExamplesReal celebration of life program examples for outdoor, restaurant, home and memorial-garden gatherings, panel by panel.
- How to Plan a Celebration of LifeA practical plan for a celebration of life: when to hold it, where, who speaks, food, music, and what to hand out.