To be upset at how many people turned up to my dad's funeral in casual clothes?

You are continually missing the point, which is that etiquette is not my specific social environment, or anyone else's. The whole point of etiquette is that there are rules on how to dress and act, so that wherever you go, unless you hear otherwise, you know what to do and how to behave appropriately. It transcends each individual circle as the default. That's the point of it.

You may have gone drinking in the pub with a guy, but you are not drinking in the pub with him now, you are marking his death, and you'd have to be an absolute clodhopper not to realise it's a different occasion. Perhaps his family said they wanted you to dress like you're going down Wetherspoons but if they didn't, assume the default and wear something plain, dark and on the smarter side. It's not hard. It's so strange that some people are all over alternative dress codes when they come up but are suddenly so confused and offended and unable when it's the default one.

In your specific social environment, that may be the ‘default code’ - and therefore, like the OP, you might be really surprised to find that it genuinely isn’t the default everywhere- even in ‘conventional’ circles such as the rural / suburban elderly churchgoing, the code is in practice NOT black and NOT over-formal.

A job interview or a wedding/christening/anniversary party is not the same as a funeral as you are inviting specific people to a specific event. Most funerals are open to all that want to come and pay respects.

They can only gauge it on their individual perception of the deceased - which as I said earlier, may be very different.

And like I said earlier, this is why etiquette and social norms exist...so that people don't have to guess, make a subjective personal judgement and risk being offensive or upsetting. If the people holding the event want to make an exception then of course they can, but if they don't then a default code applies and it's very easy to stick to.

You'd have to have lived under a rock not to know the default code for dressing for a funeral.

I went to my sister's in-law's funeral in a church. I was there to represent my family - not being close to he rinlaws and not being accustomed to English funeral services, I dressed conservatively but all the old ladies were in florals and rain coats, sort of stuff my mother would have worn shopping - I was surprised by how informal it was - I looked a little too corporate. I have also come across funerals where black is only for the immediate family only and wearing black to a funeral where you aren't immediate family is seen a bit performative.
You might want to argue neither of these are correct but the suggestion is that there's a norm is not the case, ime. If you want mourners to wear black and you are going to get upset if they don't, then save yourself the tears and specify.

I think it would have been safest for IP to specify, if it was something that mattered to her - and if she would, as it seems, prefer fewer ‘correctly dressed’ mourners to a larger number who paid their final respects in what they thought would be suitable and acceptable for the deceased. Note that often, many of the mourners don’t know the family in order to gauge ‘what the surviving family would prefer’. They can only gauge it on their individual perception of the deceased - which as I said earlier, may be very different.

But the chief mourners, ie the people who are most bereaved and grieving this loss, are invariably the ones to set the tone for the funeral, So no one has them at gunpoint to enforce a football strip/bright colours/feather boa and comedy glasses dresscode or a celebratory tone, unless that is what they want. If the deceased indicated a preference for a celebratory vibe, they have the option of fulfilling his/her wishes or not.

If a funeral is a 'celebratory' one, we have to presume it reflects the wishes of the bereaved people organising it, rather than worrying about them being pressured into it by some third party.

I don’t think that default funeral wear IS black and formal.

For a church funeral service, possibly - though ime for the funerals of the elderly churchgoing, ‘Sunday best’ (usually not black in sunmer, often eg summer florals for women, in a range of non-vivid colours, and shirt & trousers, neither black, for men) is much more normal.

For a crematorium or similar, I don’t think there is a standard dress code at all.

The whole point of a dress code is to define the code if it’s out of the normal code. The default funeral code is black, formal. Any other dress code must be defined but not the cultural norm.

So you're comparing a casual outfit to a funeral as having sex in front of children, because that's a much more sensible comparison is it? Glad you cleared that up! Jesus wept!

I think - as someone who seems to have had a summer of funerals - that people’s dress will tend very much to depend on how the attendee knew the deceased, and how the deceased presented themselves to the attendee.

OP says that many of those whose clothing was more casual were fellow drinkers in a pub, and their wives. A context in which OP’s father may well have presented himself casually, even scruffily, and in which the ‘standards’ she perceived may not have bern evident at all.

OP would have liked all the mourners to have the same perception of her DF’s character and preferences as she did. That’s normal. Equally, some of the mourners may have been surprised that the casual, jovial, welcoming man they knew at the pub had a very formal, conventions-focused daughter.

One of the fascinating aspects of a funeral is hearing stories from all sorts of different people, who knew the deceased in any number of different ways, that shed light on all sorts of aspects of their personality that the immediate family may have had no knowledge of.

OP, I am very sorry for your loss, and know that grief can express itself in many different and unexpected ways. I hope that in time, you remember how many people loved your father and wanted to pay their last respects.

Absolutely agree with all of this and the whole thread of quotes. Some people have become scared of grieving, as if you can just skip the sadness. (See also, the trend for people to say they don't want a funeral at all.) But grieving and feeling sad is necessary so you can process it and move to the next part of remembering the happy times. If you skip the sad part, the sadness doesn't go away, it just gets repressed and comes out in other ways. It's a type of mass lack of emotional intelligence. And the rituals of funerals help us in that process.

I feel the same way. Of course it is natural to grieve when someone you care about dies. Perhaps leavened with a sense of relief when someone is finally released from suffering, but I can't see anything else to be very happy about. The whole "don't be sad, they wouldn't want you to be sad" is toxic positivity and not very helpful to those who are mourning.

Weddings, christenings and birthday parties are usually invitation only and can stipulate a dress code. We don’t invite people to funerals so they are not comparable.

Sigh. I think you might be quite confused about life if this strikes you as in any way a valid comparison.

The Ritz staff are employees, with a uniform they are required to wear as part of their job. Just 'being present' isn't their job.

People attending a funeral are not the employees of the chief mourners.

I think you show your respect by making the effort to wear an appropriate and respectful outfit AND being present, it’s not either/or - if you turned up to the Ritz and the staff there were wearing dirty joggers and flip flops would you think oh, well they’re here so that’s enough, or would you think I’m not paying £1k a night to be served by chavs?

I don't think anyone has suggested otherwise, or that the OP is anything other than absolutely within her rights to be grieving and raw. None of that maps onto some of the deeply unpleasant language used about people attending funerals casually dressed, though.

I mean, I would never wear shorts and flip flops to such an occasion, but people are differant. I imagine that some came from work? Some maybe wore the nicest thing they had, some maybe don't know any better? But the important thing is that they came to pay their respects. I guess people are poorer nowadays too.

Beautifully expressed.
We are not automatons; it may be slow, difficult, painful, terrifying, but we need to grieve. It seems to be seen as somehow inefficient. Back to normal, back to work, back to consuming.
It is important to honour the dead.

I do dress up for a funeral, but I have been to plenty where not everyone has.

With many of the ones where people haven't dressed traditionally, it is lack of money and in others it was more that people were having to work and then take an afternoon off to attend, so they still had some element of work gear on. It is also a reflection of a more casual society as a whole.

I would take comfort in the fact that they turned out for him.

This resonates hugely. It induces a very odd cognitive dissonance from personal experience and the bereaved can feel incredibly pressured to "put on a show" to appease those determined to jolly them along. Missing the physical every day presence of a much loved person, and adjusting to that is incredibly hard. Regardless of personal beliefs about "better places" (shudder) accepting a new and unwanted reality is made all the harder by this new trend of skipping straight to "happy memories only". Often deaths are unexpected, traumatic, or family dynamics are complex - it's deeply, deeply personal. But the bereaved are judged for struggling, and it can actually prolong suffering, because one doesn't feel safe enough to process things with people one might have previously counted on.

This whole thread has thrown up alot of "get over it" messaging, some meant kindly, some not so much. And the point is, that yes, while everybody dies, and everybody will experience a profound loss, there is a strange element of toxic positivity that can really disrupt any hope of a healing process.

I do think that the structure of our rituals around death is important.

If you are going to reply to my post, at least refer to what I said correctly. I said ‘behind’ a toilet, not ‘in’ a toilet, and thus potentially visible to children.

Right I am being completely genuine now as I clearly need this spelled out to me.

Why is it ridiculous?

I accept that it is not ideal, but as a last resort if apparently there's no time to go home and theres no toilets in your workplace and you also apparently don't have time to detour to the nearest supermarket or wherever....why is using a conparatively private, enclosed convenient and safe space (which you can park in a secluded spot, Im not suggesting you whip your top off in the carpark next to the church as the mourners look on) "ridiculous"?

It's something ive done multiple times in my life and know many other people do so (again excluding those with disabilites) why is it apparently such an insane suggestion?

I agree too.

Agree completely....it's like mass denial.