Advice, guides & articles

When someone close to you passes away, you will more than likely be informed immediately. However, how do you find out about the death of an old friend, or a distant relative? In this blog, I am going to cover the various ways you can go about this, and also demonstrate what a useful tool funeral-notices.co.uk is when trying to do this. The traditional way to find out about a passing of someone that you knew but weren’t close to was to check in the newspaper, and for some this is still the way they prefer. People all over the country buy local newspapers, sometimes with the sole intention of checking the death notices for people they may have known.

Scattering the ashes is one of the many traditions we do to help us grieve and accept the passing of a loved one. There may be many places you and the deceased shared fond memories and you might seem lost as to where to scatter the ashes. Here we will guide you through a few ideas on where and how you go about it.

After a loved one has passed away, the grief can be overwhelming and it may be difficult to focus on what to do next. For many people, an obituary is a first step. It allows them to notify others of the death and funeral details, and also provides an opportunity to share memories of the deceased. So, where do you begin? Although every obituary is different, most follow a similar structure. In this blog I will go through this step-by-step, which will hopefully help you in what is undoubtedly a daunting task.

At Funeral-Notices.co.uk we not only give people a place to announce a recent passing or a funeral, but we have also created a space that people can come back to time and time again where they can pay tribute to and share memories of those that they have lost. You can create your own Lasting Tribute page today, and have a place that you can treasure for years to come.

In 2019, Co-op Funeralcare gathered insights from 300 of their Funeral Directors and Arrangers, and based on funerals they conducted in the previous 12 months they put together a list of the 10 most popularly requested songs to be played at funerals.

Funeral-notices.co.uk is the number 1 site across the UK for funeral notices, but what does this mean? Reach PLC is the company behind funeral-notices.co.uk, and is the largest publisher in the UK. All death notices, memoriams and acknowledgements that appear in our print publications are also uploaded to funeral-notices.co.uk. This enables the notices to reach as wide an audience as possible, as well as creating a place where people can go to remember their loved ones and leave tributes, photos and light candles in their memory. There are over 4.6 million historic notices on the site, with more than 1 million people each month interacting with these notices. However, we want to offer more to our visitors, which is why we have started this blog. We’re hoping to provide help, information and support to all those using our website who have suffered a bereavement, whether their loved one passed away yesterday or ten years ago. Some posts will help visitors wishing to place a notice on our site or in one of our publications, while others will provide information on the more personal side of bereavement. Hopefully the information provided will enable you to get the most from our site, as well as helping you through what we know is a difficult time. If there's anything you'd like to see us blog about, please e-mail help@funeral-notices.co.uk for the attention of Laura. Thanks for reading. Laura The Funeral Notices Team Follow us on social media to see when new posts are published. Facebook Twitter Instagram

Blue Monday is the name usually given to the third Monday in January, which is said to be the most depressing day of the year due to a combination of post Christmas blues, cold dark nights and bills stemming from debt due to Christmas. This was apparently calculated using an equation, however the existence of Blue Monday has since been discounted as pseudoscience and therefore not accurate. There's no denying, though, that January can be a tough month to get through. November and December are usually spent building up to the festive period, after which we all tend to feel a little flat. Just having to get back to reality and go back to work can be enough to make most of us struggle to get out of bed, not helped by the dark, dreary mornings. No wonder our motivation levels are at their lowest this time of year.

Have you ever wondered what the difference between a funeral/death notice and a memoriam is? What about an acknowledgement? We publish many different types of notices on our site, and it can sometimes be difficult to know what the different notices are for. Death/Funeral Notice A death or funeral notice is used to announce the passing of a loved one, and to share funeral details with family and friends. Funeral notices often include the date of death, some details of the family and the funeral details. Some notices that appear under the "Deaths" section are support notices from family and friends. These do not usually include details of the funeral, only condolence messages from people who knew the deceased. Memoriam Notice A memoriam notice is used to mark the anniversary of the loss of a loved one. Sometimes these include a verse or poem, or sometimes a message from loved ones. We also publish birthday memoriams, which are used to remember a lost loved one’s birthday, and memoriams for special occasions such as Mother's Day/Father’s Day/Christmas Memoriams. Acknowledgement An acknowledgement notice is used to thank family and friends for attending a lost loved one’s funeral service, as well as thanking the Funeral Director and anyone else who helped with the service. Total donations collected can also be announced in an acknowledgement notice. Lasting Tribute A Lasting Tribute notice can be created at any time to commemorate the passing of a loved one. It’s similar to a Memoriam notice, but can be placed at any time, not just on the anniversary of the death. Our lasting tribute pages offer the perfect place for family and friends to get together and share memories of their loved one. Hopefully this explains the different types of notices we offer. Thanks for reading. Laura The Funeral Notices Team Follow Funeral Notices on social media to see when new posts are published. Facebook Twitter Instagram

The most important thing to remember about grief is that everyone experiences it differently. There is no right or wrong way to grieve, you just need to do what feels right for you. There is a large range of emotions people may feel when grieving, including anger, hopelessness, sadness, resentment. You may feel all of these things, or you might not feel any. These feelings can be constant, or they may come and go in bursts. Some people may have a delayed response to grief, feeling normal or numb at first, then start to feel the emotions later on, when they have processed the bereavement. If the person who passed away had been suffering, or if the bereaved had a complicated relationship with them, they may feel relief. This is completely natural, and the bereaved should not feel guilty or ashamed for feeling this way. It doesn't mean that they didn't care for the person who has died, or that they are a bad person. Many people ask how long it takes for grief to subside, but again this is different for everyone. There's no set time frame, and no easy fix for grief. You need to experience the grief in order to move through it. It may never go away completely - when you lose someone you love, your life may change, for example if it was someone you saw regularly. You will need to adjust your routine to learn to live without them. Many people find that their grief will resurface on significant dates such as anniversaries or birthdays, or in certain places.

Christmas can be a difficult time of year when you have lost a loved one, whether you have lost someone recently or years ago. Christmas is traditionally spent with our loved ones, so when we lose one it can leave a gaping hole in the festivities, not to mention constant memories and reminders. Here are a few ways to cope with your grief at Christmas: