How to Make a Funeral Program

What to collect before you start, the eight steps in order, and how to print the sheet so the fold lands where it should. With the information in front of you, most families get from a blank page to a printed stack in about half an hour.

Updated November 8, 202611 min readWritten by the Reposa team

On this page

Gather this first
The eight steps
What to build it in
Getting the photo right
Making the words fit
Printing and folding
The proofread that matters
If you only have tonight

Gather this first

Everything below fits on one sheet of paper or one phone note. Fill it in before you open any software. If a line is still blank an hour before you print, leave it out rather than holding up the whole program.

The nine things you need

Full name, as it should appear · including the nickname and the maiden name if either is used
Date of birth and date of death · check the year, not just the month and day
Service day, date, start time, venue name and street address · get this from the funeral director, not from a text message
The officiant’s name and title · Reverend, Father, Rabbi, Pastor, Celebrant
The order of service · the church or funeral home usually has this already
Names of readers, singers, musicians and eulogists · with the title of each reading or piece of music
Pallbearers and honorary pallbearers · spelled the way each person spells their own name
The obituary text · a shortened version is fine, and often better
One good photograph · the highest resolution copy you can find, not the one off social media

Two of these routinely come back to bite families. The order of service is set by whoever is leading the service, so ask them for it rather than guessing, especially for a Catholic Mass, which has a fixed structure. And the interment and reception details often get finalized last, so ask directly whether they are confirmed before you set them in type.

The eight steps

Choose the fold before anything else
A single letter sheet folded once gives you four panels of 5.5 by 8.5 inches. That is the standard, and it holds a cover, a full order of service, an obituary of around 300 words and a thank-you.
Go to a folded booklet only if you have a long order of service, a lot of photographs, or a family list that runs past half a page. Funeral program sizes compares them with word counts for each.
Write the cover
Four lines: a phrase such as In Loving Memory of, the full name, the two dates, then the day, time and place of the service. Add the officiant underneath if there is room.
Choose your phrase from funeral program wording and keep the same tone through the rest of the booklet.
Type the order of service straight down the inside left
One line per element, with the person doing it underneath in smaller type. Do not number them. Do not add times. If a hymn or reading is still undecided, type a placeholder and highlight it so you can see what is outstanding at a glance.
Place the obituary or life sketch on the inside right
Use a shortened version. A program obituary reads better at 250 to 350 words than at the full newspaper length, and the long version is already published elsewhere.
If it has not been written yet, the obituary examples page has complete ones you can adapt in about twenty minutes.
Add the family list
Survivors first, then those who died earlier. Spouse, children and their partners, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, then siblings. This is the part of the program that gets read most closely, and the part where a missing name is remembered longest. Check it with one other person in the family.
Fill the back panel
Pallbearers, interment location, reception details, the acknowledgement from the family, and one closing line or verse. If the back is crowded, the pallbearers can move to the bottom of the inside left panel.
Set the photograph
One good photo on the cover is enough. Crop it so the face fills a decent share of the frame, and leave clear space between the bottom of the picture and the name. If you have several photos the family wants included, a small strip of three inside works better than one large collage.
Print one, fold it, read it out loud, then print the rest
A folded proof shows you things a screen never will: a heading that lands upside down, a photo that runs into the crease, type too small to read in a dim church. Read every name aloud with another person before you commit to the full run.

What to build it in

There are four realistic options, and the right one depends mostly on how much time you have and how much the design matters to you.

Option	Good for	The catch
The funeral home	Families who want one less thing to do. Usually a handful of stock covers, printed and delivered with everything else.	Limited design choice, and late changes have to go through the director.
Word or Publisher	Anyone comfortable with text boxes who wants full control and has the software already.	Panel order in a folded sheet is not reading order. One late edit can push every element out of place.
Canva or a similar design tool	People who want a good-looking cover quickly and do not mind learning an interface tonight.	Free templates vary in print quality. Check the export is a print PDF, not a screen image.
A guided funeral program builder	Families who want to answer questions rather than lay anything out, and need it right the first time.	Less freedom to move things around than a blank canvas gives you.

Reposa is the fourth kind. You answer the questions in the checklist above, it lays out every panel at the correct size with the folds in the right places, and it produces a print-ready PDF plus matching prayer cards. You can build the whole thing and see it before deciding whether to download it. If you want to see the layouts first, the funeral program templates page shows all of them.

Getting the photo right

A blurry cover photo is the most common regret families have about a program they made themselves, and it is entirely avoidable.

Four rules for the cover photo

Find the original, not the copy · photos saved from Facebook or sent over text are compressed and print soft
Scan prints at 600 dpi if you can · most home all-in-one printers will do this; 300 dpi is the floor for print
If you photograph a print, use daylight and no flash · shoot straight down, near a window, and crop out the border
Print it small rather than large if it is soft · a crisp three-inch photo beats a blurry six-inch one every time

A useful rule of thumb: for a photo printed about four inches wide, you want an image at least 1,200 pixels across. Below that it will look acceptable on your screen and disappointing on paper. If the only picture in existence is a small one, put it in an oval or a soft-edged frame at a modest size. That treatment has been used for a century precisely because it flatters imperfect photographs.

Choose the picture the family recognizes rather than the most flattering one. The photo people want is usually five to fifteen years old, taken at something ordinary, with the person looking like themselves.

Making the words fit

The most common problem in a homemade program is too much text in too small a space. Rough working budgets for a 5.5 by 8.5 inch panel at a comfortable reading size:

Panel	Roughly holds	If it overflows
Front cover	A phrase, a name, two dates, four lines of service details, one photo	Move the officiant credit inside
Inside left (order of service)	Fifteen to twenty labeled lines with a name under each	Drop the prelude and postlude titles, or set the block in two columns
Inside right (obituary)	About 300 to 350 words, or 250 with a heading and a photo	Cut the obituary rather than shrinking the type below about 10 point
Back panel	Pallbearers, interment, reception, a thank-you, one closing line	Move the pallbearers to the bottom of the inside left panel

Set body text somewhere around 10 to 11 point and headings around 13 to 14. Anything below 9 point is a problem for the older half of the room, who are the people most likely to read the program carefully. If it does not fit, cut words. It always reads better than shrinking type.

What to cut first when the obituary is too long

In this order

1. Middle names of survivors' spouses 2. The full list of schools attended 3. Jobs held before the main career 4. Club and organization memberships beyond two 5. The list of hobbies, reduced to the two that were really theirs 6. Any sentence beginning “She will be deeply missed by”

Keep: the dates, the marriage, the work that mattered, two specific details, the survivors, the service information.

Printing and folding

Before printing anything, export a PDF and open it. Printing straight from a word processor is where fonts substitute themselves and margins move.

Print setup

Export to PDF first, then print the PDF
Print at 100 percent, not fit to page · scaling shifts the fold line and shrinks the margins
Use text-weight paper heavier than copy paper · it folds crisply and stops the back panel showing through
Choose matte over gloss · easier to read under bright church lighting, and it does not hold fingerprints
Fold one and check every panel is the right way up · this is the single most common home-printing error
Count on one for every two guests, plus twenty-five to fifty spares · and a handful set aside for the family to keep

If you are printing double sided at home, run a test with the pages numbered so you learn which way your printer takes paper back in. Most people get it wrong the first time and it costs nothing to find out on scrap paper.

A copy shop will do the whole run in under an hour in most towns, and will score the fold so heavier paper does not crack. Bring the PDF on a flash drive as well as emailing it. Funeral program printing covers paper weights, bleed, and what to ask a print shop for.

The proofread that matters

Do this with one other family member, on paper, out loud. It takes six minutes and it is the difference between a program that is fine and one that has to be apologized for.

Read these aloud, pointing at each one

Every first name, last name and spelling of a married name
Both dates, including the years
The service start time, and the start time on the funeral home notice, and confirm they match
The venue street address and town
The cemetery name
The reception address and time
The officiant’s title, spelled and abbreviated correctly
Every name in the survivors list, against a written family list

If something is wrong after printing, the rule is simple. Names, dates, times and addresses are worth reprinting. Everything else is not. A misplaced comma in the obituary is invisible to everyone at the service except you.

If you only have tonight

When the service is tomorrow, cut the job down to this. It is a real program, and nobody will know the difference.

Cover, twelve minutes
Phrase, name, dates, service details. One photo if you have one ready. Do not go looking through boxes tonight.
Order of service, ten minutes
Ask the officiant to text you the order and type it exactly as they give it. Names underneath where you have them, left blank where you do not.
Obituary, cut to 200 words, ten minutes
Take the version the funeral home already has and cut it in half. Keep the dates, the marriage, the work, and two details that were really theirs.
Back page, five minutes
Pallbearers, interment, reception address, and one sentence of thanks. A single sentence is a complete acknowledgement.
Print, fold, done
One proof, folded and read aloud, then the full run. If the home printer is fighting you, a copy shop that opens early will have it ready before the service.

Skip the family list, the photo collage, the poem and the map. All of them are optional, and a clean four-panel program with correct information is better than an ambitious one with a mistake in it. The full inventory, if you want to see what you are choosing not to do, is on what to include in a funeral program.

Common questions

How long does it take to make a funeral program?

About thirty minutes of actual work if the information is already collected, and closer to two hours if you are still chasing dates, names and a photograph. Collecting first is what saves the time. Families who open a blank document before they have the order of service usually rewrite the whole thing at least twice.

Can I make a funeral program in Microsoft Word?

You can, and many families do. Set the page to landscape, add two columns, and remember that the panel order in a folded sheet is not the reading order. The difficulty is not Word itself but the text boxes and image wrapping, which tend to shift everything when you make a late change to a name.

How many funeral programs should I print?

About one for every two guests you expect, since couples and families share a program, then add twenty-five to fifty spares for people who take an extra to mail to a relative. Running out is far more upsetting on the day than having leftovers.

What paper should I use for funeral programs?

A text-weight paper heavier than copy paper folds cleanly and does not show print through the page. Very heavy card stock cracks along the fold unless the printer scores it first. Matte finishes are easier to read in a bright church than gloss, and they do not show fingerprints.

Can the funeral home make the program for me?

Nearly all of them will, and it is often included or offered at a modest cost. The tradeoffs are design choice, which is usually limited to a handful of stock covers, and turnaround, since late changes have to go through the director. Many families have the funeral home print a program someone else designed.

What do I do if I find a typo after printing?

If it is a name or a service time, reprint. Everything else can stand. Nobody at the service is proofreading, and a small error in the middle of the obituary will not be noticed by anyone but you. Keep the file so you can correct it before printing any additional copies later.

Do I need a photo on the front?

No, though most families want one. A program with the name, the dates and a plain border is dignified and complete. If the only picture you have is low resolution, printing it small on the cover looks far better than printing it large and blurry across the whole panel.