Choosing how to send off a deceased person is a crucial part of the entire ceremony. When deciding whether to opt for cremation services or funeral services, many factors will come into play. Of course, the most important thing is to respect the wishes of the person for whom the ceremony is being arranged. If both ideas are on the table, then planners can look at a number of factors to help them decide.
Costs
For people looking to go with a more affordable option, cremation is definitely better than burying the body. Burials cost more because many procedures and processes are required. For example, burials need the body to be embalmed, well-dressed for burying, a funeral director to conduct the service, and so forth. On the other hand, a cremation can be more straightforward, with the only requirement being that the body be transported to a crematorium for the process.
Environmental concerns
Funerals also tend to be less environmentally friendly than cremations. A funeral will require a casket, which needs to be made out of wood or a similar material which will affect the environment, although somewhat minimally. Also, bodies take a while to decompose in the ground, thereby altering the ecosystem of the area slightly. A cremation poses little or no risk to the environment.
Physical presence
Also, funerals often require plots of land to be set aside as the burial ground. Doing so can come at an additional cost, and also takes up space which can be detrimental to land in areas where there is a large population with little space to use. That being said, having a burial ground to visit is often considered therapeutic for the loved ones of the deceased. Cremation does not leave room for such visits, since there is no burial ground. On the other hand, the ashes can be stored in an urn and kept close to family members.
Duration of process
Funerals often take much longer than cremation services. This is because they involve multiple processes that also have to be planned with more effort and time. A typical funeral plan will set aside time for transfer of the body to a funeral home, preservation and preparation of the body, then transportation to the funeral service and finally, the burial. Evidently, this takes more time. However, it gives relatives and friends enough time to mourn their loss. Cremation saves time, and also reduces the agonising period.
The great news is that cremation services and funeral services are not mutually exclusive, meaning that one can actually have both of them. For example, a person’s body can be laid out for a funeral service, then cremated after the entire ceremony is over. Another example is where a body can be cremated even if it had earlier been buried. This would involve exhuming the buried body then delivering it to a crematorium. If the choice is hard to make, planners should always go for the most suitable choice, and then have a different ceremony if something else is chosen later.