Planning a funeral is something very few of us have done before the moment we need to. If you have recently lost someone and are now facing the practical responsibilities, this guide is designed to walk you through the key steps — clearly and without unnecessary complexity. You do not have to manage any of this alone, and most of it can be handled one step at a time.
Step 1: Accept help
The first thing to know is that you are not expected to know what to do. A funeral director will guide you through the entire process — from registering the death to organising the service and managing the practical arrangements. If someone close to you offers to help with any part of this, accept it. You do not need to carry it alone.
Step 2: Register the death
Before a funeral can take place, the death must be registered with your local register office. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland this should happen within five days; in Scotland, within eight days. Any close family member can register the death, provided they have the medical certificate of cause of death from the attending doctor or hospital.
If there has been a post-mortem or the coroner is involved, registration may be delayed — your funeral director will advise on timing. You can find your nearest register office at Gov.uk.
Registration gives you the death certificate — a separate document from the cause of death certificate — which you will need multiple copies of for banks, pension providers, insurers and other institutions.
Step 3: Choose a funeral director
Most families choose a funeral director local to them — often one recommended by someone they trust, or one the family has used before. The funeral director takes responsibility for the deceased from the point of collection, arranges the date and venue of the service, liaises with the crematorium or cemetery, and is alongside the family throughout.
Do not feel obliged to take the first quote you receive. Ask for a clear, itemised estimate, and do not feel pressured into choosing services you do not want. A good funeral director will listen to what matters to the family and give you straightforward, honest guidance.
Step 4: Burial or cremation
You may already know what the person wanted — if so, that decision is already made. If not, it is one for the family, and there is no wrong answer. Around three-quarters of funerals in the UK are now cremations; burial tends to be chosen where there is a family plot, a religious tradition, or a wish for a permanent marked place to visit. Natural and woodland burial is a third option, growing in popularity for those who want a less formal or more environmentally considered choice.
We have written separate guides to cremation, traditional burial and woodland and green burial if you want to understand the differences in more detail.
Step 5: Plan the service
The type of ceremony — religious, humanist or civil — will shape the rest of the planning. Your funeral director, minister or celebrant will help you work through the running order, music, readings and tributes. Ask questions at every stage. There is no question too small, and no wish too particular to explore.
The service is where most of the personalisation happens — and it matters more than many families expect. The music, the readings, who speaks, what they say — these are the things people carry with them. If the person had particular wishes, or if there are things the family knows would have been important to them, this is the moment to act on them.
Step 6: Notify relevant institutions
Once you have the death certificate, there is a practical process of notification to work through — banks and building societies, pension providers, the DVLA, HMRC, the DWP (to stop any benefits payments), insurance companies, and any subscriptions or memberships. It is worth making a list and working through it methodically. The Tell Us Once service, available through Gov.uk, allows you to notify most government departments in a single step.
Step 7: Funeral flowers
Many families now ask for family flowers only, with a request for donations to a charity in the person’s name. If you do want flowers, your funeral director can suggest florists, or you may prefer to arrange them independently. Coffin flowers are usually co-ordinated through the funeral director.
Step 8: The order of service and stationery
The order of service is not one of the first conversations a family has — that comes after speaking with the funeral director, and often with the minister or celebrant too. But it is one of the most personal decisions in the whole process, and it is worth giving it real thought.
Among all the elements of a funeral, the order of service is the one thing that can be taken away and looked at again afterwards. It goes home with everyone in that room. For many families, it becomes something kept for years — on a mantelpiece, in a memory box, passed between relatives who couldn’t be there. The care that goes into it is not just for the day itself.
Families put a great deal of effort into personalising a service. The music, the readings, the tributes — all of it is an expression of who the person was. The order of service is one more way to do that: a photograph chosen carefully, a design that reflects something about them, wording that came from the family rather than a stock template.
Some families arrive at this decision after seeing an order of service at another funeral and wanting something similar. Others find that the options available through the funeral director are too basic for what they have in mind. What both groups are often looking for is not just a printed booklet — it is the conversation. The chance to sit with a designer, share what they are thinking, describe the person, and have someone help them turn that into something real and lasting.
That is exactly how we work at Fitting Farewell. You speak directly with your designer. You tell us about the person — their photographs, their personality, the things they loved. We take it from there, and we design something that could only have been made for them. We typically print and deliver within three working days, at one transparent price with nothing extra to pay.
Talk to us about your order of service →
A planning checklist
- Register the death (within 5 days in England, Wales and Northern Ireland; 8 days in Scotland)
- Obtain multiple copies of the death certificate
- Choose a funeral director and request an itemised estimate
- Decide on burial or cremation
- Choose the type of service — religious, humanist or civil
- Work with the funeral director and celebrant on the running order, music and readings
- Notify banks, pension providers, HMRC, DWP and other institutions (use Tell Us Once where possible)
- Arrange flowers or request charitable donations
- Commission the order of service and any other stationery
