What happens at a cremation service, and how long it takes

A cremation service is the attended kind of cremation: the family and mourners gather in the crematorium’s chapel, a service of twenty to forty-five minutes is held with the coffin present, the coffin is committed at the end of it, and the cremation happens afterwards. This guide is what happens in the room, in order, for anyone attending or arranging one for the first time. A direct cremation has none of this, and direct cremation step by step is the guide for that.

Before the service

Crematoria book services into slots, commonly thirty or forty-five minutes, and the chapel is turned around between one family and the next, so the times are kept. Mourners arrive ten or fifteen minutes before and wait outside or in a waiting room. The hearse arrives at the time, the family follows it in their cars, and the coffin is carried into the chapel by the funeral director’s bearers or by family members who have asked to carry it, with the family walking behind. Everyone else is already seated.

If there has been a church service first, the crematorium part is shorter, often just the committal, and the slot booked is shorter too.

The service itself

A celebrant or a minister leads it: a religious minister for a religious service, a civil celebrant or a humanist celebrant for a non-religious one. The shape is nearly always the same. Words of welcome and the person’s name. A tribute, the eulogy, given by the celebrant or by a family member or friend. Readings, poems or a piece of music chosen by the family, usually two or three. Prayers, if religious. Then the committal.

The whole of that fits the slot because the funeral director and the celebrant have planned it to, and a family who wants a long service, many speakers or a great deal of music should say so early, because it means booking a double slot.

The committal

The committal is the moment the coffin is formally given up. The celebrant says the committal words, and then one of three things happens, depending on the crematorium and the family’s wish: curtains close around the coffin, the coffin is lowered on a catafalque out of sight, or the coffin stays where it is and the family leaves it there. That last option exists at many crematoria and families are not always told; it is worth asking for if the closing of the curtain is the part you dread.

Music usually plays through the committal and as people leave. The family leaves first, and the mourners follow them out to the flowers, which are laid outside, and then to the wake.

After the family has left

The coffin is taken from the chapel to the crematorium’s committal room, where the crematorium’s staff take over. Any pacemaker is removed, the coffin is checked against its name card, and the cremation itself happens that day, usually within hours; the code of practice crematoria follow allows a coffin to be held over to the next day only with the applicant’s written consent. It takes one and a half to three hours, and the ashes are ready the same day or the next; how long does a cremation take covers the rest of that day and the days after. The family is not present for any of it, which is the same as at a direct cremation; the difference is the service beforehand.

How long it all takes

From arrival to leaving the chapel is usually under an hour. With a church service first, the day is longer: the church, the drive to the crematorium, the committal. With the wake afterwards, most families count the day from mid-morning to mid-afternoon.

Whether to have one

That is the choice between a traditional funeral and a direct cremation, and it is a real choice with good families on each side. Direct cremation or a traditional funeral sets the two beside each other, and is a direct cremation right for us is six questions for settling it.