Create a notice

What type of customer are you?

General Public Funeral Directors

Why create a notice?

Announce the passing

Publish funeral arrangements

Remember a loved one gone before

Raise charitable donations

Share a loved one’s notice

Add unlimited tributes to this everlasting notice

Create a notice

Guides

Funeral Notice Examples

by Richard Howlett

• Published 03/04/2023

A frequently asked question of our specialist Funeral Notice Team is what to actually include in a Funeral Notice? It is a frequently Googled question too, as one of our most visited blog articles each month is this one on ‘How to Write a Good Obituary Notice’.

To help illustrate what goes into writing a Funeral Notice and how you can personalise them, we have found five good examples below that each demonstrate different elements that we see regularly in the Funeral Notices that appear on our site.

How to start a Funeral Notice

Funeral Notices commonly start like this one for Anne Wressell, letting the reader know that the person has passed peacefully, suddenly, or even tragically. This one little word change can tell people a lot, so it is worth thinking about what you should choose.

You can also see in this particular notice they have decided to list how she was related to various family members. This is not essential by any means, but it can sometimes help the reader to know that they are reading the notice of someone they knew; there’s lots of John Smith’s, but if it says they were 53 and married to Jane Smith, then that helps to narrow it down.

Can I include a verse in a Funeral Notice?

A lot of the time a main Funeral Notice will be kept more factual, informing people of who has passed and when their funeral will be, but there is no strict rule saying that this has to be the case. In the notice for Amber Sugden they have added a couple of nice personal touches that make the notice sound a little warmer. Firstly they added a simple line that says ‘Always loved, always remembered’; four simple words that add so much sentiment to the notice.

Often verses, poems and quotes are saved for a support notice, which is an entirely separate notice to the main Funeral Notice that usually comes from a specific friend or family member, and serves to allow the person to say something a bit more personal. However, Amber’s family decided to include a short verse in the Funeral Notice and I think it injected a bit of personality into what can sometimes appear a little cold.

What other personal touches can I add to a Funeral Notice?

A trend that is becoming more and more common is to ask mourners who are attending the funeral to wear a certain colour or type of clothing that reflects the deceased's interests or personality. In the notice for Rhian Meryl Griffiths they have asked people to wear something bright to reflect her ‘vivacious personality and love of life’, a lovely personal touch that will make for a talking point at the funeral.

A slightly different kind of personalisation can be seen in the Funeral Notice for David Andrew Evans. David was from Porthmadog in Wales, and so the notice itself was written in both English and Welsh, a touch that I am sure was greatly appreciated by all his Welsh speaking friends and family.

Can I just write a simple Funeral Notice?

I think the point I am trying to make with the previous examples is that really you can say what you like in a Funeral Notice. Of course there are certain traditions and formats that people tend to follow, but if you want to buck the trend then there is nothing stopping you. On a similar note, if you just want a simple Funeral Notice without any fuss, then you can do that too. The Funeral Notice for Linda Miriam Caldecott is about as simple as you can get, but it still does it’s job of informing people of both the passing and the funeral.

If you are still unsure of what you want to include, then do not be afraid of asking the Funeral Director for help. They are very familiar with Funeral Notices and will guide and assist you in any way that they can.

Follow funeral-notices.co.uk on social media to see when new articles are published:

Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
LinkedIn