How to Write Down Your Funeral Wishes: What to Include, Where to Keep It, and How to Make Sure It Is Found in Time

October 6, 2026 · 8 min read

Most people have at least one strong opinion about their own funeral. No open casket. That one song, definitely not that other song. Cremation, and scatter the ashes somewhere that mattered. Nobody in black. The problem is not that people have no wishes; it is that the wishes live in their head, or in a conversation their partner half remembers, or on page six of a will that is read three weeks after the service already happened. This post is about getting those wishes onto a page that the right person will actually find within a day or two of your death, which is the only window in which they are useful.

Why funeral wishes do not belong in your will

A will is the right place for who inherits what and who is in charge of the estate. It is a poor place for funeral instructions, for a practical reason: in most families the will is located, read and acted on after the funeral, not before. The executor may not have a copy to hand, the solicitor may be closed for the weekend, and in many countries the legal process of proving the will takes weeks. Meanwhile the funeral is usually arranged within days. Whatever you wrote in the will about music and flowers is discovered too late to matter.

There is a second reason. In most jurisdictions, funeral wishes written in a will are not legally binding anyway. The decision typically rests with the executor or the next of kin, and courts rarely force a family to follow a specific instruction. That sounds discouraging, but it is actually freeing: because the document is a statement of wishes rather than a legal instrument, you can write it in plain language, update it whenever you like, and keep it somewhere accessible instead of in a safe. Its power comes from being found, not from being enforceable.

What to include in a funeral wishes document

Keep it to one or two pages. The person reading it will be exhausted and grieving, and a long document is skimmed, not followed. Decide what you genuinely care about and leave the rest open. Something like "I don't mind" next to an item is a kindness; it tells the family they are free to choose without wondering whether they got it wrong.

• Burial, cremation or something else. If cremation, what should happen to the ashes: kept, scattered (where), interred, split between people. If burial, whether you already own a plot and where the paperwork is.
• The kind of service, if any. Religious or secular, in a place of worship, a crematorium chapel, a hall or outdoors. Whether you want a service at all; a direct cremation with a memorial gathering later is increasingly common and worth saying explicitly if that is what you prefer.
• Who should lead it and who should speak. Name a celebrant or a faith leader if you have one in mind, and say whether you would like particular people to give a eulogy or reading, or whether you would rather nobody felt obliged.
• Music and readings. Two or three pieces is plenty. Write the exact title and artist; "that hymn we sang at Mum's funeral" will cause an argument.
• Dress code, flowers and donations. Whether people should wear black, bright colours, or whatever they like. Whether you want flowers or a charity donation instead, and which charity.
• Who must be told. The people outside the obvious family circle who would want to know and might otherwise be missed: an old friend abroad, a former colleague, a neighbour. Names and the best way to reach them. Our guide to informing people of a death on WhatsApp covers the wording once the list exists.
• Things you specifically do not want. This is often the most valuable section. No open casket, no viewing, no live-streaming, no particular relative speaking. Families find a clear no easier to honour than a vague preference.
• Practicalities only you know. A prepaid funeral plan and its reference number, a life insurance policy that covers funeral costs, a burial plot deed, membership of a religious community with its own customs. Say where the documents are.

What to leave out

Passwords, account numbers and anything financial belong in a separate, properly secured place; a funeral document gets photocopied and passed around, and it should contain nothing that would be dangerous in the wrong hands. Our post on password manager emergency access covers the secure route for those. Likewise, leave out instructions about your estate or your belongings; that is the will's job, and mixing the two invites the family to treat the funeral document as a legal one and fight over it.

Resist the urge to script every minute. A funeral is also for the people left behind, and a document that leaves them no room to add their own touches can feel more like a set of orders than a gift. State the things that matter to you, say clearly which things do not, and trust them with the rest.

Where to keep funeral wishes so they are found in time

This is where most people's good intentions fail. A document in a drawer, a safe or a solicitor's office is a document that gets found after the event. Three things need to be true: the people who will arrange your funeral know the document exists, they know where it is, and they can get to it without a key, a password or a court order.

1. Tell two people. Your partner or next of kin, and one person outside the household. If only one person knows and that person is also in the car with you, the document is lost.
2. Keep a paper copy somewhere obvious at home. A labelled envelope in the kitchen drawer with the passports beats a fireproof safe nobody can open. If you have a "when I die" folder, this goes at the front of it.
3. Give a copy to the person who will actually organise things. Not the executor of your will, necessarily; the person who will phone the funeral director. Those are often different people.
4. Keep a digital copy that is delivered, not just stored. A file in your cloud drive helps only if someone can log in to your account. A message that is sent to the right people after your death, with the document attached, removes that dependency. That is what Final Saying is built for: you write the message now, name the recipients, and it is delivered when your check-ins stop. For a funeral document specifically, keep the check-in interval short enough that delivery happens within days, as explained in our post on choosing a check-in interval.
5. Date it, and review it yearly. Wishes change, relationships change, the charity you named may close. A quick annual read-through, perhaps on the same day you check your other end-of-life plans, keeps the document honest.

A simple funeral wishes template

Copy this, delete what does not apply, and write in plain sentences. There is no official format anywhere in the world that this needs to match.

• My funeral wishes. Full name, date written, and one line saying this is a statement of wishes, not a will, and that it replaces any earlier version.
• Body. Burial / cremation / donation to medical science / I don't mind. For cremation: what to do with the ashes. For burial: plot details and where the papers are.
• Service. Type of service and where. Who I would like to lead it. Whether I want one at all, and if not, what I would like instead (a gathering, a meal, nothing).
• People. Who I would like to speak, if they are willing. Who must be told, with contact details. Anyone who should not be asked to take part.
• Details. Music (title and artist). Readings. Dress. Flowers or donations, and to whom.
• Things I do not want. As specific as you can be.
• Money and paperwork. Prepaid plan or insurance, with reference numbers and where the documents are. Whether I am happy for the family to spend less than they might feel obliged to.
• Where the copies of this are. List every place, so that if one copy is updated the others can be too.
• Signature and date. Not legally required, but it reassures the family that the document is genuinely yours.

Talking about it is the hard part

Writing the document takes twenty minutes. Telling your family it exists is what people put off for years, because it means naming the fact that you will die. The good news is that the document makes the conversation easier, not harder: you are not asking them to imagine your death, you are handing them a page and saying "this is where it is, you won't have to guess." Our post on talking to your parents about end-of-life wishes has scripts for opening that conversation, and they work just as well in the other direction.

Nobody ever regretted having the document. The regret, which comes up again and again in bereaved families, is standing in a funeral director's office trying to remember whether she said cremation, and whether that was a joke. One page, two people who know where it is, and a copy that reaches them on its own: that is the whole job. Our digital legacy planning checklist shows where funeral wishes sit among the other documents worth preparing.