Planning and hosting a memorial service for someone you love can be overwhelming and stressful as you work through your emotions. Here are a few things you can do to make the process a little more stress-free overall:
Choose a Funeral Home That Offers Music Service
Music is typically a large part of memorial services because it helps people open up emotionally so they can deal with the loss instead of holding their feelings in. Music offers a communal experience that can help to strengthen the relationships of loved ones who are sharing the same grief. So, it's important to make sure that a music lineup is planned, practiced, and performed at your loved one's memorial service.
Instead of stressing yourself out about the music lineup and performance, choose a funeral home that offers music services. They should provide you with a variety of song options to choose from, and then create a lineup for the ceremony and either perform it live or manage it on a stereo system of some kind. You shouldn't have to worry about anything but approving the songs that will be featured during the service. Contact funeral homes like the one represented at http://www.hitzemanfuneral.com to learn what they offer in terms of music.
Plan a Potluck to Accommodate the Guests
Feeding your guests is another important aspect of planning and hosting a memorial service for your loved one, but there's no reason that all the responsibility of planning and executing a menu should fall only on your shoulders. Spread the responsibility around by planning a potluck and asking each guest to bring a different dish to share with everyone else. This way, you can focus on planning and preparing just one dish yourself so you have more time for the more enjoyable stuff, like setting up and decorate the food tables.
Assign Equal Talk-Time to Family Members
Creating a eulogy can be stressful and time consuming, but luckily this is another task that you can recruit others to help out with so you don't get overwhelmed with the process. Ask each family member and close friend to prepare a eulogy 2-3 minutes long so everyone can take turns speaking at the memorial service. If you're more on the shy side, you can forego writing and presenting a eulogy yourself and simply introduce everyone else who wants to talk. If you find that there's more time to fill for the service after scheduling everyone's eulogies, consider putting together a short video presentation that features clips and photos depicting your loved one's life.
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