A funeral celebrant is a qualified officiant who will take the service and will help you throughout the arranging of the funeral. A celebrant’s aim is to take the service while also helping the family through the arranging process to make sure that they are able to give the most tailored celebration of life they can achieve.
A celebrant is the person who will arrange the content of the funeral itself. While the funeral directors role is to arrange everything around the funeral, the celebrants job is to help arrange what will happen during the funeral. This can include and is not limited to, help with the orders of service, music, writing and reading the eulogy. A celebrant will meet with you, your family, and friends to discuss your wishes and ideals. If you live a distance away, they may suggest a zoom or phone call. During the meeting, the celebrant will try to get an understanding of how the deceased was in life to make sure that they can give the tailored service that you would want.
There are two types of celebrants, there are civil celebrants and humanist celebrants. Both civil and humanist celebrants will provide a very similar service however the biggest difference is the amount of religious aspects they will put into their services.
- Civil celebrants tend to be independent and work as a middle ground between religious and non-religious services. Civil Celebrants can have the funeral based around the deceased and their life experiences while also having a hymn or maybe their favourite bible verse. However if the deceased was very religious a local minister in their religion might be a better fit to take their funeral.
- Humanist celebrants are part of an organisation and therefor may have slightly higher costs as part of their costings go towards the organisation. Humanists celebrants won’t have any aspects of the funeral based around religion or any reference to a higher being.
Some humanists will even go through all of the songs suggested for the funeral to make sure none of the lyrics have any references to higher beings. Choosing what type of celebrant, you want for the funeral service will come down to you and your family depending on how much religious aspects you would like in the service.
When it comes to booking a funeral celebrant you and your family may already have a celebrant in mind which you wish to use for the service, however if this isn’t the case your funeral director will know a wide range of celebrants and will help tailor the choice to the celebrant that best suits you and your family. It’s important that the celebrant you have for the service is the celebrant that will be able to best tailor the funeral to your wants and needs all while paying respect and making sure your loved ones funeral is how they would have wanted it.
Costings for celebrants vary person to person but on average funeral celebrants cost around about £250. This can vary based on the individual but can also vary on how much they charge for travel.
