Family Vs. Funeral Home Staff — Tips For Assigning Funeral Service Roles
When you're overseeing the funeral service of a recently deceased loved one at the funeral home in advance of traveling to the cemetery for the burial, one of the duties that you'll need to consider is delegating people for a variety of roles on the day of the service. There may be some family members and close friends who wish to contribute. Beyond the important roles of eulogist and pallbearers, there are a number of other jobs that people can perform. In many cases, funeral home staff can also perform these roles for you, so you'll need to decide who will take care of each role — family or friends or funeral home staff. Here are some roles and who is best suited for them.
Greeter
It's customary to have one or more people at the doors of the funeral home to greet guests as they arrive. While you might like the idea of having family or friends fulfill this role, it's generally a better one for funeral home staff. They'll be able to direct people to the room that you'll be using for the service, which is valuable if the funeral home is large and there are multiple services taking place concurrently. Additionally, if family members are in this role, attendees will stop to offer their condolences, which will create a logjam at the building's doors.
Ushers
Although you can use some funeral home employees to serve as ushers to help guests get seated, this is an ideal job for family members and friends. The chief benefit to using these people for this role is that they'll recognize many of the attendees. This way, if you have a couple rows at the front of the room for family members, or perhaps a reserved row for work colleagues, the ushers will be more apt to recognize certain people and seat them accordingly. This saves the challenge of someone sitting in the wrong row and having to get up and move before the service begins.
Parking Escorts
In some cases, it's nice to have someone accompany attendees to their vehicles after the service. This is generally a job that is most suitable for funeral home employees. If you assign it to family members, an individual family member may be outside for several minutes as he or she helps a guest get into his or her car — this may pose a problem for another family member who is looking to speak to the family member who is now indisposed with the parking duty.
For more information, consider contacting companies like DiPonzio Funeral Home Inc.
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