How to Plan a Celebration of Life

The five decisions that settle everything else

Everything else follows from these. Make them in this order, in one sitting if you can, with the two or three people who are actually going to do the work.

1. 1

   Pick a date, even a rough one

   Nothing can be booked, invited or printed until there is a date. Choose the weekend that works for the people who must be there, not the one that works for everybody, because the second one does not exist.

   A Saturday or Sunday afternoon is easiest for guests. If people are flying in, give yourself at least three weeks.

2. 2

   Guess the number, then choose the place

   Count the people who will definitely come, double it, and round up. That is your venue size. Guest counts for a celebration are less reliable than for a funeral, because the date is further out and nobody feels obliged.

   Under about forty people, a home or a restaurant back room is almost always the right answer.

3. 3

   Name a host out loud

   One person opens the gathering, says what happens next, keeps the open floor moving and closes it. It should not be the widow, the widower, or whoever is least able to speak without stopping.

   A brother, an adult child, a colleague, or the friend who runs meetings for a living. Tell them now, not the day before.

4. 4

   Decide how many people speak

   Two or three prepared speakers plus an open floor is a full program. Four is a long afternoon. Six is an endurance test, and the last two get a room that has stopped listening.

   Write the number down and hold to it. When someone else asks to speak, the open floor is the answer.

5. 5

   Settle the food, and let someone else own it

   Food decides the budget, the venue rules and the length of the afternoon. Pick one of three: catered, potluck, or something simple bought that morning. All three are normal.

   Then hand it to one person entirely. Food is the easiest large job to give away and the one families most often keep.

Once those five are fixed, the remaining work is mostly errands, and errands can be shared out. If the death was recent and the immediate paperwork is still ahead of you, the funeral planning checklist covers the first seventy-two hours, which is a different job from this one.

When to hold it

A celebration of life is not bound to the funeral home calendar or to a burial date, so the only real constraint is the people you want in the room.

Within two weeks. Feels close to a funeral, and local people will come in numbers. Best when most of the family lives nearby and everybody wants it over with rather than ahead of them. Hardest on whoever is organizing it, because it lands in the same fortnight as the death certificate, the bank and the insurance.

Four to eight weeks. The most common choice and usually the best one. Travel is possible, the family has slept, and people arrive able to talk rather than only able to cry. Long enough that you can print properly, short enough that momentum holds.

Several months, or a year. Suits a death in winter with a summer gathering, a family scattered across time zones, or ashes to be interred when a garden is open. It works, but it needs a reason stated plainly on the invitation and again on the program, or guests wonder why they are there. A birthday, an anniversary, or the season the person liked best all serve.

On the time of day: early afternoon is easiest. Two o’clock leaves the morning for travel, does not commit you to a full meal, and lets people leave without it being conspicuous. Evening gatherings run longer and looser, which some families want and some do not.

Where to hold it

The venue sets the tone more than anything else you choose, and it also sets the cost. This is the honest comparison.

One thing worth more than any feature on that list: a place the person actually went. The lake they fished, the hall where they played cards, the back room where they ate lunch three days a week. It gives the afternoon a subject, and it gives guests something to talk about the moment they walk in.

Who speaks, and how to ask

Two or three prepared speakers is the target. Choose them for range rather than closeness: someone from the family, someone from the work, someone from the friendship. Three angles on a person is a portrait. Three children in a row is a repetition.

Ask in writing so people can say no without having to do it to your face, and give them the length in the same message. Almost nobody refuses, but almost everybody wants to know the rules.

Three things in that message do the work: a specific length, permission to read from paper, and permission to refuse. Speakers who are told “say a few words” with no limit either speak for ninety seconds or for eleven minutes, and both are the fault of the ask.

Give every speaker the same three facts: how long, whether there is a microphone, and where in the order they come. If someone wants help writing, how to write a eulogy has a structure that works in one evening, and funeral speech examples has short ones for anyone who is not the main speaker.

The open floor

An open microphone is the part of a celebration people remember, and it is also the part most likely to go wrong. Three things prevent that.

Ask two people privately in advance to go first, so the opening silence does not stretch past the point where anyone will volunteer. Print a limit on the program: keep it to a few minutes so everyone gets a turn does more than a host asking on the day. And put cards and pens on a table for the people who will never stand up but have something to say. The family reads those cards for years.

If someone is clearly not going to stop, the host stands up, walks toward them, thanks them by name, and starts clapping. It works, it is not rude, and everyone in the room will be relieved.

Food, drink and music

Food is not decoration at a celebration of life. It is the reason people stay long enough to talk to each other, which is the actual point of the day.

Catered is the least work and the most money. Order for fewer people than you invited; at a standing gathering, a significant share of guests eat almost nothing. Potluck is normal in most of the country and gives people a job, which many badly want. Assign categories rather than leaving it open, or you will get eleven desserts. Bought that morning, meaning sandwich trays, fruit, a sheet cake and coffee, is entirely respectable and nobody has ever complained about it.

Whatever you choose, the food should be out and available before the speaking starts or immediately after. A gap between the last speaker and the first plate is where a room goes flat.

On alcohol: many families have a drink because the person did, and it is unremarkable at a celebration. Check the venue rules first, and decide in advance who is not drinking, because there should be somebody steering the afternoon who is completely clear-headed.

Music

Three pieces is the standard load. Something as people arrive, something in the middle, something at the end. A phone, a speaker and a playlist made the night before is enough for a room of sixty; anything larger and outdoors needs a rented speaker and someone who has tested it in the actual space.

The middle piece is the one to think about. 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. Both are real choices. Tell people whether to sit or sing, on the program, because guests without a liturgy genuinely do not know.

The exit music matters more than it seems. It is the last thing anyone hears and it sets the tone of the room they walk into. Something the person actually liked beats something solemn they never played.

What to hand out

Guests do better with something in their hands. A program tells them what is happening and who is speaking, and it is the object they keep. One letter sheet folded once is enough for almost every celebration: photograph and name on the front, the short life inside left, the order inside right, thanks and one request on the back.

Print roughly one for every two guests, because couples and families share, plus twenty-five to fifty spares, ten of them kept back for the family. Programs are the cheapest part of the day, and running out of them at the door is the shortage guests notice.

You can skip favors, printed photo collages, memorial candles and anything described as a keepsake package. None of it is missed. For how the program itself is put together, see celebration of life program, or start from finished wording in celebration of life program examples. The mailable keepsake version is covered in memorial cards.

A run sheet for the day

One page, printed, given to the host and to two other people. It is the difference between an afternoon that moves and one that stalls while three people look at each other.

Two lines on that sheet are the important ones. “Cut it off at 2:55 whatever is happening” gives the host permission in advance, which is the only thing that makes it possible. And the last line of the 6:30 block sends the family indoors while somebody else finishes, which is the single kindest piece of planning on the page.

What to hand to somebody else

People will ask what they can do and mean it. Most families answer “nothing, thank you” and then do all of it themselves at midnight. Every job below can be given away completely, with a name and a deadline attached.

That last one is worth starting immediately. Write down every dish, flower, donation and airport run as it happens, because six weeks later nobody remembers. Funeral thank-you card wording has short notes you can send without composing each one, and what to say at a funeral is worth forwarding to anyone who has asked you what they should say.

You are allowed to do less than this whole page

A celebration of life has no required elements at all. That is its strength and it is also why families build them into something enormous. There is no liturgy telling you when you are finished, so the work expands to fill whatever energy you have, and right now you have very little.

So, plainly: twenty people in a living room, one person saying a few words, and food on the counter is a complete celebration of life. Nobody who comes will think it was thin. What people remember is who was there and whether they got to say something, not whether there was a slideshow.

When you get to the printed part, Reposa turns your answers into the program, the order of the afternoon, matching cards and a slideshow, ready to print. If you want blanks to fill in rather than a finished example, celebration of life program templates is the place to start.