5 tips for a more intimate live-stream funeral experience
Helpful tips to create the most intimate live-stream funeral, and provide a personal and meaningful experience for remote viewing family members.
Live-stream funerals have made a lot of news recently, in the wake of Covid-19 and social distancing regulations, however, it’s been gaining popularity for several years to include distant family members in the service. The current circumstances are different because choice is not a factor and for this reason, some families may feel a loss of part of their grieving process.
It doesn’t need to be this way. There are many ways to provide an inclusive and meaningful experience for family members viewing from home. It isn’t the venue that makes the service, but rather the collective memories, reflections and shared experience in saying goodbye. Below are some tips to help you get the most intimate live-stream funeral experience for your remote viewing family members.
Share a digital order of service.
A printed order of service booklet helps the congregation follow the service, sometimes including the words to the main prayer or hymn. Providing a digital version in advance to family and friends viewing from home, helps them feel included and engaged in the service. They may not feel the compulsion to sing along with the hymns, but following the words in their mind as the congregation sings or recites the prayers can create a richer more intimate experience.
Include more information for remote viewers.
A digital funeral service booklet can be more than a running order. Unlike the printed booklet, where printing costs limit the number of pages, the digital service booklet can have many pages at no extra cost. Providing more pictures and meaningful quotes from a poem or a reading can be a beautiful way to tell the story of your loved one’s life. Enriching the digital booklet in this way can provide a personal connection and more intimate funeral experience for those viewing from afar.
Prepare a visual tribute.
Visual tributes, or memorial slideshows, have become increasingly popular for all kinds of funerals and memorial services. They are a beautiful moment usually at the end of the service for individuals to reflect, often bringing warmth and levity at a time of deep sadness. The slideshow can be especially important however, in establishing an emotional connection for those attending from home. In the absence of the congregation, the ambiance of the chappel or memorial venue, the stream of pictures spanning the life of the deceased can prompt memories and a more meaningful experience.
This is the simplest way to create one.
Include family members in the preparation.
Some funeral homes offer to create the slideshow for their families, or recommend other companies to do it, which can come at a high cost. In our experience and for many families we’ve spoken to, they found the process of creating the visual tribute themselves highly cathartic. Also, inviting remote family members to contribute pictures can make them feel more included in the service. This is especially true where they may feel some guilt or regret for not being able to attend in person.
Add more pictures for a live-streamed funeral.
Many live-streamed funerals provide remote attendees with the option to choose between a camera view or watching the memorial slideshow video throughout the service. This gives newfound importance to the visual tribute and the opportunity to show more memories, for a richer experience when attending remotely.
Eulogize makes intimate live-streamed funerals simple and rewarding.
Eulogize enables anyone to create beautiful and meaningful memorial slideshows, memorial cards and funeral service booklets with no special skills required. You can do it without any fuss right in your web browser. We’ve simplified all the complicated stuff, so all you need to do is collect your pictures and arrange your content, to produce beautiful professional-quality memorials at a fraction of the cost.
Our unique family image-upload feature lets you collect pictures from everyone in one place easily, from any computer or device and popular photo-sharing and storage apps.
A range of professionally designed, customisable templates allows you to create the perfect memorial in minutes, just the way you’d like it. Preview them, share them with family for review and then download as an mp4 video file, a print-ready pdf and share a digital service booklet. All with no-fuss and without the hefty price tag.
We believe in the cathartic power of creating your own memorials and aim to make it easier for families to get the most from this experience, and provide their family members with the most intimate live-stream funeral memory.
Start a memorial for your loved one. Get started for free.