Any funeral celebrants on here?

[Tradescantia252]

The funeral industry is a line of work that I have long been drawn to.... I can't really explain why, but I'm literate, compassionate good with people and looking for a role with real meaning.

The idea of speaking in front of a room full of people at one of the most significant times of their lives terrifies me a bit - but I know I could do it, and with some practice, could be good at it. I want to challenge myself now my kids are grown; it would be amazing to find a role which could see me through to retirement (c.12 years) without the daily dread of the dull, dull, dull office I suffer in my admin current role.

I am also interested in the flexibility of being self employed, although I know nothing about how it might work, how to manage accounts or to self promote. Not sure how good I could be at this part! A part time salary would be fine, say £1000+ / month / is this feasible?

If you're a funeral celebrant, would you be willing to share a picture of what it might be like to join your industry? How you got into it, how / where you trained, how you find work, if you're accredited by any organisation, how many funerals you do each month - any useful info really. I would be so grateful. Or even just some pointers where I can find this sort of information / where best to begin!

Hmm. It's not really an earner.

You'd be better talking to a funeral director or a crem, asking whether there are enough in your area.

There's time spent with the family, plus coordinating with the planner (usually funeral directors).
Bear in mind you don't get to select 'easy' ones while you find your feet. Your first funeral could be the one with three blended families and an abusive drunk Aunty.

My family member that does it makes a fortune!

I don't know the ins and outs but they work alongside funeral directors so that's where the work comes from unless recommended by others, they have to turn work away and get full fairly quickly. I don't think they trained, it was just something which fit well with his previous experience and skills.

The basics he does is, meet the family get full details for the service, write up everything send it to family to check through and then obviously the service itself.

Hi 👋 Op

I agree second that,
To get into touch with a funeral Directors, or a crem place,

I am just thinking , I heard somewhere that it can be possible,
To have some voluntary work experience at a funeral home to get insight on this kind of career,
I think this be obviously beneficial to you,

There's quite several youtube Internet videos , free to watch,
Of funeral directors doing all kinds of work in their roles too,

There's a popular American female Funeral Director, on youtube internet who shows you the kind of work she does,
Gives surprisingly insight on her chosen career,
She is down to earth, likeable , knowledgeable

I can't rember her name

I have friends who do this although along with other work as it’s not really a money maker.

lots of Funeral directors will already have a couple of reliable and trusted people they call on.

training as an embalmer would give you a decent income and a Funeral Director is likely to trial behind the scenes before offering future work with an embalmer where it’s a risky move with a celebrant just because their trial is a family’s goodbye and things going wrong really aren’t an option.

Thank you everyone. Food for thought.

I’m a parish minister, and conducting funeral is a privilege of my calling and one which I find very fulfilling. The difficulty I do have is that I am taking the funerals of people I know well, sometimes as close friends, and that can be hard. But as a celebrant, that is much less likely to happen.

Depending on where you are, then I think it would be do-able as a part-time job. It can take a fair bit of time to put together a funeral service - I normally spend between 4-7 hours on a straightforward service, and more complex situations can mean days, but then I’m dealing with more aspects of the service than a celebrant is.

From what you say, you already have the skills needed, apart from the public speaking aspect, and that is crucial. You need to practice that aspect of the role before you start taking services, so look at gaining skills and experience in that. There’s an organisation called Toastmasters which you might think about joining. https://toastmasterclub.org/portal.php?page=-1&marknow=0

Conducting funeral services and being alongside the bereaved at that time is tremendously rewarding. There is usually lots of laughter as well as tears, and although some families can be difficult or challenging, most are a pleasure to spend time with. You do need to develop ways of coping with the more difficult services though - those of a child, for example, or where the circumstances of the death have been distressing. You find your own way of doing that - I block time in my diary if I can for long prayerful walks in the fresh air.

@Goodread1 You might be thinking of Caitlin, aka Ask a Mortician on YouTube. She’s fab - I binge-watched her videos when I first came across her channel.

But not so much about the “front of house” aspect of funerals.

I’m technically a trained funeral celebrant although I don’t do funerals these days.

For me, there’s no money in it — I live in Scotland, where the CoS will do a funeral for next to nothing, so there’s very little market for celebrants here. (They do exist, but there aren’t many.)

Talking to local funeral directors is a good idea, because it’ll be them who’ll call you, or recommend you to the family. They’ll also be able to give you a sense of the local ‘market’ and how much work there is.

Active listening was the most important part of the course I did; being able to tease information about the deceased person out of (usually) just one person, who is recently bereaved) is actually quite difficult. For me, it was the hardest part.

You'd also be surprised how often you’ll encounter trauma and difficult family situations. When people die, it’s messy in all senses.

And you’d need to be prepared for awful, horrible situations — a peer of mine on the course was asked to do the funeral for a young woman who’d been killed by her so-called partner in a domestic violence situation. That kind of raw, deep grief and anger up-close took a very specific set of skills to deal with.

I used to do it. It’s not much of an earner - rates were around £165 per funeral, which works out about £15 - £20 per hour. To earn full time money you would need one funeral a day.

There is quite a lot of saturation in the market as a lot of people have had a similar thought process to yourself. Unfortunately this has led to some truly poor celebrants, so be honest with yourself about how good you might actually be. There is only one chance to get it right for the family so it is a huge amount of responsibility and stress. Having said that, if you do become a good celebrant, it is very rewarding to be able to give comfort to grieving friends and family.

It does often also involve dealing with family politics, some of which may not be shared with you do you can be left dealing with awkward situations and having to think on your feet.

I began as a wedding celebrant and was asked from there to do some funerals. I have no formal training, and referrals were word of mouth. I think being asked to be funeral celebrant for one of the local undertakers who died helped, as many of the local undertakers came to his funeral and therefore could feel confident about referring me to grieving families.

Good luck if you do pursue this path, learn all you can, think about funerals you have been to and analyse them as dispassionately as possible as to what you thought was positive/negative, and remember you have to cram it all into 15 minutes (which is why there is always a clock in the back wall of crematoria so that the celebrant can keep an eye on timings).

@JuneShitfield

That’s interesting as I’m Church of Scotland and am very rarely asked to take a parish funeral these days as the families are employing a celebrant. In this context a parish funeral is where the deceased wasn’t a church member but lived in my parish, and as their parish minister I would do their funeral free of charge. Certainly in areas of deprivation and poverty ministers encourage non-church-goers to let a minister conduct the service rather than have them bear the expense of a paid celebrant.

I know from talking to staff at local crematoria that there is also an increasing tendency for there to be no celebrant at all at funerals, but instead mourners come forward to speak about the deceased. I’m pretty sure this is something that people have seen on TV or in films, and then because they’ve seen it at other funerals. It means no one is “managing” the service and they can run way over time which is very difficult for the crematorium staff. I arrived at a crematorium one time, where the staff had managed to get back on schedule by having funerals over lunchtime and an empty slot after 8 different people spoke at a morning funeral, and refused to bring the service to a close until they had all had their say!

@Albless Yes that sounds tricky. Managing the crem schedule is hard enough as it is! We were taught to create 20, 30 and 45 minute funerals to fit in various lengths of ‘slots’ but a lot of people do get in the room and want to freeball it. Understandable, and nice if there was unlimited time, but sadly there usually isn’t.

One of the best, and most appreciated, part of my course was the behind-the-scenes at the crematorium part. The care and respect that was shown absolutely humbled me and the process was also fascinating.

People doing funerals themselves is a tricky one. Sometimes it can be really lovely, sometimes it can be a total disaster! I was told about one where the family decided it would be a good idea to release live birds — doves, I think — inside the crematorium hall. There was a poo situation and then they were all pecking at the windows trying to get out. It was like Hitchcock’s The Birds in reverse.

On fees — I think it’s more of a thing in England, because a CofE minister/vicar charges a fee (about £165 I think) so most celebrants peg their fee to that. Because in the CoS there’s no charge for a minister, it kind of sets the cost expectation for a celebrant to be low or zero. Ultimately I found that I couldn’t cover my costs. It probably varies a bit by area.

I walked away from funerals because I had a tough one (a particularly young person) which affected me. Plus I couldn’t make a living doing it.

Not really an earner? They tend to charge about £250 for a half hour funeral. Obviously there is a bit of preparation time on top of that. Even if you only do a couple of week that’s £2000 a month for a part time job.