How many people would come to my funeral?

[Ecci]

DH and I were discussing this and we both feel that there's unlikely to be more than 10 mourners, let alone the 30 currently allowed. We don't have any children, lots of young adult nieces and nephews but only 3 of them are likely to come. Possibly a few friends. Is this unusual? Do most people have more than 30? I suggested to DH that if he went first, I would arrange for him to have one of those just cremations, but no funeral. Much to my astonishment, he was appalled. He wants an actual funeral, even though there'd be hardly anyone there. I suppose I'd have to comply with his wishes, if that situation arises.

We waited 6 weeks for mil funeral during last Oct/Nov. We did the funeral over zoom.

It got us thinking about our own. Dh wants a funeral despite the he fact that only I would be there - and quite frankly that’s debatable.
I have written my wish that no one is to be present. Straight to green burial and plonk a tree on my head. Failing that direct cremation and scatter the ashes at a green burial site.

"I was coming on to say this. I found it very odd when living in England that people had to be ‘invited’ to funerals, and that the feeling was that attendance should be limited to those who were invited as having known the deceased well, and there have been posts on here from people outraged that non-invited people showed up at the church."

That's a Covid thing surely. Unless a funeral notice says close friends and family only, you don't have to be invited to a funeral.
I'm in Wales, but have been to a funeral in England and I'm pretty sure it was open to anyone.

@chittychittybang

You'd be surprised. Some people go to funerals of people they hardly know, or haven't seen for years. Old neighbours, work colleagues from years ago, someone who used to pop in their shop sometimes. I'm always surprised at who comes out of the woodwork if there's a buffet available.

My gm went to funerals of people she didn't really know if they were people who'd made some kind of contribution to society. She used to wear purple rather than black. I don't think she went to the wake though and I'm guessing maybe not to the actual burial either.

"The gap between death and funeral is conventionally much longer in England. Three weeks seems quite usual, sometimes longer. "

Isn't that just a London thing to do with slots?
3 weeks is not the norm in Britain as a whole, I don't think.

@TeenMinusTests

I don't think it is so much 'invited to the funeral' but more 'have been informed of the death, asked to be told funeral details, and then told them'.

There's usually a notice in the paper though so you don't need to have been personally informed. A lot of old people check the death notices regularly!

"Dh wants a funeral despite the he fact that only I would be there - and quite frankly that’s debatable."

Eh?

I’d have quite a lot of people coming, but that’s because my whole church would turn up, and extended family too unless there were literally no flights available (funerals happen within 3 days of death where I come from). In the same way, I’d be expected to go to any relatives’ funerals if the case arose, and it’s something I’m really not looking forward to dealing with in the future. I have one grandparent left and zero relationship with her, but when she dies I can’t imagine my dad being happy if I don’t take the week off work and fly across the world to attend a two hour event at a cemetery, for someone I barely knew.

I have provided a specific service for funerals before, and the nicest (if I may use that word, because they’re never nice) ones are those where you can see the attendees were close to the person who had died. Family, friends, work colleagues who had stories to share and memories about the deceased. Then there were the big corporate bosses and third cousins who felt they had to be there when they really didn’t want to, had nothing to say to the family and the whole situation was just a bit awkward.

@Gwenhwyfar

"The gap between death and funeral is conventionally much longer in England. Three weeks seems quite usual, sometimes longer. "

Isn't that just a London thing to do with slots?
3 weeks is not the norm in Britain as a whole, I don't think.

I know of and have attended funerals in many parts of the country, including rural England, where the death had occurred 6 or 8 weeks before. This was pre-Covid too. Don’t know why.

Doesn't it depend where it is?
Would it be where you live now or where you were brought up etc?
I wouldn't expect casual friends to travel and I don't have that many friends still where I come from so I can't imagine there'd be that many people. Lost touch with some of my first cousins so it would be strange for them to come I suppose, but some of my second cousins would if they knew about it. I'm only still in touch with a few school friends, but would others who I haven't been in touch with for years turn up?
I'm tempted to fake it just to find out. Fascinating.

There's usually a notice in the paper though so you don't need to have been personally informed. A lot of old people check the death notices regularly!

But that only works if people are local. So for my PIL that worked just great, but wouldn't work so well for people who have moved around etc.

"I know of and have attended funerals in many parts of the country, including rural England, where the death had occurred 6 or 8 weeks before. This was pre-Covid too. Don’t know why."

Interesting. I haven't heard of that in Wales.
In my family it's usually taken about a week to organise.

"But that only works if people are local. So for my PIL that worked just great, but wouldn't work so well for people who have moved around etc."

These days it's often put on Facebook isn't it or a local person calls the friends who've moved away.
The notices are often online too, but you wouldn't see them unless you were looking.

I'm from Wales and it's common to be 2/3 weeks to arrange a funeral, particularly in the winter months.

If you wanted a private funeral then you wouldn't notify the paper or Facebook if it could be helped, although some people do feel the need to use Facebook as a mouthpiece when it isn't their place.

I can think of at least 50 people whose funeral I would attend if they died, so I presume similar would apply in reverse? Friends, extended family, colleagues.

I live in a village in a rural county and people seem to attend funerals at the local church of people they knew of, rather than knew well.
When my DD died we had no idea how many people would come. She was severely learning disabled so didn't have 'friends' as such. There were 200 in the church and 130 at the wake - and we don't have a big family.
When my parents died (2 years apart) there were only around 30 at each funeral, but then lots of their friends and relatives had either gone before them or were too old and infirm to attend.

We talked about it here last week as Prince Philips funeral was on the TV. Gave me the opportunity to say that I don't want one. I did get a bit of a funny look, so it may not have gone down too well. Who knows ultimately what will happen, as I won't have any control. I'd come back and haunt everyone if I did get one!!! 👻

I find the whole idea of funerals strange and always have done.

"If you wanted a private funeral then you wouldn't notify the paper or Facebook if it could be helped"

Most people still notify the paper of the death itself, just not the funeral arrangements.

"When my DD died we had no idea how many people would come. She was severely learning disabled so didn't have 'friends' as such. There were 200 in the church and 130 at the wake - and we don't have a big family.
When my parents died (2 years apart) there were only around 30 at each funeral, but then lots of their friends and relatives had either gone before them or were too old and infirm to attend."

People are often very moved when a young person dies.
With my DGM, my DM said many local people probably thought she'd gone a long time ago because she'd been far away in a home for years :(

@PhilCornwall1

We talked about it here last week as Prince Philips funeral was on the TV. Gave me the opportunity to say that I don't want one. I did get a bit of a funny look, so it may not have gone down too well. Who knows ultimately what will happen, as I won't have any control. I'd come back and haunt everyone if I did get one!!! 👻

I find the whole idea of funerals strange and always have done.

You can argue that they're more for the living than the dead. Helps people say good bye.

Perhaps gwenhwyfar I was shocked to find it's now something like £80 for a tiny square, up to £200 for a large square in the death notices for our local paper death noticed pages, with a circulation area of about 20,000 people.

I think it's one of those scenarios where what's normal is what you and those you know do, and what you don't know you don't know. (I don't mean that offensively, just that the deaths you don't hear about you never knew happened.)

I don't think many would come to my funeral either.

"although some people do feel the need to use Facebook as a mouthpiece when it isn't their place."

If someone has died, it's not usually a secret though is it, once close loved ones have been informed? If someone I knew had died, I would feel obliged to pass on the message to other people who knew the person. Their family may not know them all.

"I'm from Wales and it's common to be 2/3 weeks to arrange a funeral, particularly in the winter months."

I just checked death notices Wales (doesn't seem to be possible on the Western Mail or Daily Post's own websites) and 2 weeks was the average so my family must be faster than usual.

You can argue that they're more for the living than the dead. Helps people say good bye.

Very true. Bloody expensive though.

@Gwenhwyfar

"I was coming on to say this. I found it very odd when living in England that people had to be ‘invited’ to funerals, and that the feeling was that attendance should be limited to those who were invited as having known the deceased well, and there have been posts on here from people outraged that non-invited people showed up at the church."

That's a Covid thing surely. Unless a funeral notice says close friends and family only, you don't have to be invited to a funeral.
I'm in Wales, but have been to a funeral in England and I'm pretty sure it was open to anyone.

No, this was living in Oxford, London and the Midlands between the late 1990s and 2019. I hadn’t given it much thought, only it came up a few times with colleagues or neighbours expressing irritation at the presence of people they didn’t want at funerals — though I suppose it’s not so much a formal invitation, as letting people know the time and date — but without deaths and funeral arrangements being on RIP.ie or announced on local radio daily, I suppose phoning or emailing people IS the invitation. These people presumably hadn’t been phoned but came anyway?

I’d assumed the whole village would be at the funeral of a longtime resident who died shortly after we arrived in Leicestershire, but it was about 30...?

@Vinto, I’m only recently back in Ireland and almost all of that has been Covid, so I can’t generalise on numbers per year, but in terms of workplaces, the thing with Irish funerals is that they typically have several parts, so you could probably make one, even if work wasn’t flexible. The removal is usually in the evening at a funeral home, for instance, or a wake at the house. And bringing children is perfectly normal — which seems like another big difference — so it’s not that you’d have to arrange childcare.

I think the main difference is caused by the fact that funeral-going is so frequent that it’s less fraught and less formal just because it’s more familiar.

I notice down the years on Mn posts from people who ask about what to wear to a funeral, is grey ok instead of black, what do you do in church, is bringing a baby ok, how to avoid crying etc etc, which reminds me that it’s a much more infrequent experience elsewhere.