How to Arrange a Funeral, Step by Step

Somebody has to make the calls. If that person is you, here is the whole sequence, in the order that saves money and second trips. It works whether the death happened this morning or you are planning years ahead for yourself.

The first decision is what happens to the body: burial, cremation, or donation. Everything else follows from it. The funeral home you choose, the products you buy, the permits you need, and roughly half of the total bill all depend on this one answer, so make it before you talk to anyone selling anything.

• Burial means a casket, a cemetery plot, probably an outer burial container, and opening and closing fees. It is the most expensive route and the one with the most add-ons.
• Cremation is now the American default. NFDA projects a 63.4 percent cremation rate for 2025, against 31.6 percent for burial.^[3] Cremation still allows a full funeral with viewing first, or a simple direct cremation with a memorial later.
• Donation to a medical school or anatomical program can reduce the cost to nearly zero, but programs can reject a body, so you still need a backup plan.

A service and a disposition are separate decisions. You can hold a full funeral and then cremate. You can bury with no service at all. Keep the two questions apart and the options get cheaper and clearer.

If the person who died planned ahead, find that paperwork first: a prepaid funeral contract, a letter of instruction, or notes in an end-of-life file. Our end-of-life planning checklist shows what those documents look like. If the death just happened and you are still in the first hours, start with what to do when someone dies and come back to this guide when the body is in a funeral home's care.

Do not default to the funeral home your family has always used, and do not pick the one nearest the hospital. Call three. Prices for identical services vary by thousands of dollars within the same zip code, and the only way to see that is to compare.

Comparison shopping is a federal right. Under the FTC Funeral Rule, a funeral home must give you price information over the telephone, and it cannot demand your name or number before answering. Visit in person and it must hand you a General Price List: a written, itemized menu of every product and service it sells, and the list is yours to keep.^[1]

Ask each of the three for the same five numbers:

• The price of direct cremation, complete.
• The price of immediate burial, complete.
• The basic services fee.
• Embalming and preparation of the body.
• Use of facilities and staff for a viewing and for a ceremony.

Write the numbers down. Twenty minutes of phone calls routinely saves more money than any other step in this article. Before you sign anything, the funeral home must also give you an itemized statement showing exactly what you are buying and what each line costs.^[1] Read every line. We covered these rights in detail in our guide to the Funeral Rule, the federal law most families have never heard of until they need it.

One charge is unavoidable. The nondeclinable basic services fee covers funeral planning, securing permits and death certificate copies, sheltering the body, and coordinating with the cemetery or crematory. Every funeral home charges it, no matter what else you buy.^[2] The national median is $2,459.^[4] Nearly everything else on the price list is optional, whatever the sales conversation implies.

Embalming. No state law requires routine embalming for every death.^[1] It is generally unnecessary when the body will be buried or cremated shortly after death, and refrigeration is an alternative.^[2] Some funeral homes require embalming for a public viewing. That is company policy, not law, and you can take your business somewhere that does not. The median charge is $845.^[4]

The casket. The median price of a metal casket from a funeral home is $2,500, and models run past $10,000.^[2][4] You can buy a casket online or from a retailer for far less, and the funeral home must accept it and cannot charge you a handling fee for doing so.^[1] The funeral home also has to show you a casket price list before showing you any caskets.^[2] For cremation, you can decline a casket entirely. An alternative cremation container has a median price of $160.^[4]

Cash advance items. Flowers, obituary notices, clergy honoraria, and other things the funeral home buys on your behalf. Some funeral homes add a markup or service fee, and if they do, the Funeral Rule requires them to disclose it in writing.^[2] You can order the flowers and place the obituary yourself and skip the middleman entirely.

Once the money questions are handled, plan the event. Every funeral service, religious or not, comes down to the same short list of decisions:

• Who leads it. Clergy for a religious service, a professional celebrant or a family member for a secular one. Celebrants typically meet the family, gather stories, and build the service around the person who died rather than a fixed liturgy.
• Where. A house of worship, the funeral home chapel, a graveside, or any venue that will have you. Nothing requires the service to happen at the funeral home.
• Who speaks. Pick two or three people and ask them directly. Give each a time limit. An open mic is a gamble; know your crowd before you offer one.
• The order. A standard sequence is music, welcome, readings, eulogy, shared memories, closing words, music out. Religious traditions have their own fixed order, and the officiant will know it.
• Open or closed casket. Your call, shaped by the condition of the body and the family's wishes. An open casket viewing is the main reason funeral homes push embalming.
• Body present or not. A memorial service held after burial or cremation removes the deadline pressure and the cost of facilities, staff, and preparation of the body. Grief does not expire in a week. A service a month out is allowed.

If you chose burial, the cemetery is a second, separate negotiation. The plot itself is one price. Then come the extras, and this is where families get blindsided.

The vault or grave liner. No state law requires an outer burial container, and a funeral provider is not allowed to tell you otherwise. Many cemeteries require one anyway, as policy, to keep the grave from sinking as the casket deteriorates.^[2] Ask the cemetery which container it accepts, then compare prices. The median vault price through a funeral home is $1,695, and third-party dealers often sell the same container for less.^[2][4] A basic grave liner satisfies most cemetery policies at a fraction of a vault's price.

Opening and closing the grave. The cemetery charges separately to dig and fill the grave, and the fee is often quoted only after you have bought the plot.^[2] Ask for it up front, and ask whether weekends cost more.

The marker. Headstones and grave markers are a separate purchase with their own installation fee, and many cemeteries charge extra to set a marker bought from an outside monument dealer. Get the cemetery's rules in writing before you order.

Note that the Funeral Rule does not cover most stand-alone cemeteries.^[1] The GPL rights you have at the funeral home do not automatically follow you to the cemetery office, so ask harder questions there.

The National Funeral Directors Association's most recent General Price List Study puts the national median cost of a funeral with viewing and burial at $8,300. Add the vault most cemeteries require and the median reaches $9,995. A funeral with viewing and cremation runs a median of $6,280.^[3][4] Those figures are from NFDA's 2023 study, which remains the current published national data.

The line items behind the burial median: basic services fee $2,459, removal and transfer of the body $395, embalming $845, other preparation $295, viewing facilities $475, ceremony facilities $550, hearse $375, and the metal casket at $2,500.^[4]

Now the part the medians hide: none of those totals include the cemetery. No plot, no opening and closing fee, no marker, and no cash advance items like flowers or the obituary.^[3] A burial that shows $9,995 on the funeral home's paperwork lands well into five figures once the cemetery is paid. We break down the full picture, including direct cremation and body donation prices, in how much a funeral costs in 2026.

Expect the funeral home to want payment, or a guaranteed source of it, before the service happens. Here are the sources, in the order to check them:

• A prepaid plan. Search the person's papers for a preneed funeral contract or funeral insurance policy before you spend a dollar. Paying twice for the same funeral happens more than it should.
• The estate. Funeral costs are ordinarily payable from the money the person left behind. If a family member fronts the cost, keep every receipt and itemized statement so the estate can reimburse them.
• Life insurance assignment. Most funeral homes accept an assignment of life insurance proceeds: the beneficiary signs over part of the payout, and the funeral home waits for the insurer instead of demanding cash now. Some route this through assignment companies that take a fee, so ask what the assignment costs.
• Payment plans. Some funeral homes offer them. Ask, and get the terms in writing before signing.
• County indigent programs. If there is genuinely no money, most counties have a program that pays for a basic disposition, usually direct cremation or immediate burial. Call the county coroner, medical examiner, or social services office and ask about indigent burial assistance. It exists precisely for this.
• Social Security. A one-time lump-sum death payment of $255 goes to an eligible surviving spouse or child. Apply within two years of the death or it is forfeited.^[5] It will not fund a funeral, but it is owed, so claim it.

Two documents close out the process, and the funeral home handles most of it as part of that basic services fee: filing the death certificate with the state and securing the burial or cremation permits.^[2]

Your job is the certified copies. Banks, life insurers, the Social Security Administration, the DMV, pension plans, and title companies each demand their own certified copy of the death certificate, and photocopies are refused almost everywhere. Order at least ten through the funeral home when they ask, because reordering later is slower. If you need more copies down the road, every state's vital records office sells them; the CDC keeps a directory of all of them, and fees vary by state.^[6]

For cremation, the next of kin signs a cremation authorization form, and some states impose a short waiting period before the cremation can happen. The funeral home will walk you through both, because it cannot proceed without them.

That is the whole job. Disposition, three phone calls, a hard look at the price list, a service built on purpose, a cemetery interrogated as closely as the funeral home, and the paperwork ordered in bulk. Arranging a funeral is not mysterious. It is a purchase, made at the worst possible time, and the sequence above is how you make it with your eyes open.