A celebration of life has one job: to sound like the person it honours. That is what makes it different from following a standard order of service — and it is also why planning one can feel daunting. There is no fixed template, so every choice is yours to make.
The good news is that the choices come in a sensible order. Work through them one at a time — whether you are planning ahead for yourself, or planning for someone you love — and a gathering takes shape that feels genuinely theirs.
Step 1: Decide the tone before anything else
Everything downstream — venue, music, dress, speeches — flows from one question: how should this feel? Some lives call for a quiet, reflective service. Others call for something closer to a party, with the person’s favourite songs played loud and stories that get laughs. Most sit somewhere in between: real grief, made bearable by real joy.
If you are planning for yourself, say the tone out loud and write it down — it is the single most useful instruction you can leave. “Keep it light. Play the good songs. Nobody wears black unless they want to” tells your family more than pages of logistics.
Step 2: Choose a place that fits the person
A celebration of life does not need a chapel. It needs a place with enough room for the people coming and some connection — even a loose one — to the person. Common choices:
- A family backyard or a favourite park — informal, personal, and free
- A surf club, golf club, pub function room or community hall — practical, and often where the person actually spent their time
- The beach, a lookout, a garden — powerful when a place mattered to them
- A funeral home or chapel — still the right answer when structure and support are what the family needs
Timing is flexible too. A celebration of life can happen days after a death, or weeks later once far-flung family can travel — some families hold a small private farewell first and the celebration later, when there is room to breathe.
Step 3: Gather the photos, music and video early
The most moving part of most celebrations is not a speech — it is a photo appearing on screen that half the room has never seen, set to a song everyone knows was their song. That takes gathering, and gathering takes time. Start early:
- Ask each branch of the family for their ten best photos — specific asks get results, "send me everything" gets nothing
- Pick the music deliberately: a song for arrival, quiet pieces behind the slideshow, and one song that ends the gathering the way the person would have wanted
- Short video clips — even shaky phone footage of a laugh — often land harder than any posed photograph
Step 4: Plan the words
Decide who speaks, roughly for how long, and in what order. Three to five speakers is usually right — enough voices to show different sides of a life, few enough that each one has room. Mix generations if you can: a sibling, a friend, a grandchild reading something short.
If a eulogy needs writing, our guide to writing a eulogy walks through a structure that works even when grief makes writing feel impossible. And if you are planning ahead for yourself, consider writing your own — there is something unrepeatable about a room hearing a person’s own words, in their own voice.
Step 5: Add the touches only this person would have
- A guestbook — physical, digital, or both — so the stories told that day are not lost
- Their actual things: the guitar, the fishing rod, the football scarf, the terrible hat
- Food and drink they loved, not standard catering — lamingtons beat canapés if lamingtons were theirs
- A way for people who cannot attend to take part: a shared slideshow link, or a message book gathered beforehand
Step 6: Write it all down in one place
A celebration of life plan scattered across text messages, a notebook and three people’s memories is a plan that partly happens. Put it in one place: the tone, the venue ideas, the music list, the photos, the speakers, the small touches. If you are planning ahead, make sure the right people know where that place is and can reach it when the day comes.
However you do it — a folder, a document, or a purpose-built home for all of it like MiWish — the plan you write down is a gift. It turns the worst week of your family’s life from a hundred guessed decisions into a day that simply, truly sounds like you.