What is a bespoke funeral?

The word ‘bespoke’ is widely used with regard to funerals, the two other most common areas for the word being suits and software.

So, what actually is meant by bespoke? Looking at similar words, bespoke is synonymous to tailored, customised, handmade, styled, adapted, suitable, comfortable, made to measure.

The need for bespoke funerals was the main reason we set up Green Fuse in 2000, which is now the funeral director you know as Heart And Soul Funerals. As every person is unique, we felt that funerals were all rather similar. At that time, 20 minutes at the crematorium led by a member of clergy, with some prayers, hymns, a Bible reading and a few often rather vague words about the ‘deceased’- a term we don’t like because it feels depersonalising. We talk about ‘the person who has died’.

My own experience of this began in the 1990s. The family funerals I had been to for grandparents, uncle and friends were fairly standardised. In 1997 Susie, to whom I had been married and then separated, took her own life at the age of 42. I wasn’t working in funerals then but took it upon myself to think about what her funeral should be like. Her parents were in their 70s, her siblings friends and colleagues in their 40s, her godchildren and niece much younger.

In this case, the word bespoke stood for finding something that would be suitable for all those people and to reflect the person she was. She had a friend who was a priest but not attached to a church. He could take the service. Her parents would certainly expect her funeral to be in their local church where we had married. There had to be some formality for them, a hearse and formal funeral directors. She loved flowers and gardens, so those were important. The flowers on her coffin were beautiful and wild. It was April, so we had Spring flowers, loosely put together. Church and church readings were not familiar to her. The last book she had been reading was essays by Ben Okri so we chose one of those and a friend read it, about a dancer who ‘stamped the dampness from her soul’. We played her favourite record, ‘Listen To The Music’ by The Doobey Brothers, which talked about good times and sad times and spoke to the depression she had suffered at times for many years. Friends came up and talked about her. The service lasted about an hour. On the way out we went  and touched the coffin to say our goodbyes and the funeral directors took her to the crematorium with just the priest present. We then had the wake.

None of these things in themselves were wildly different, but together in 1997 they had a fresh feel for what a funeral service could be like. The point about it being a bespoke service is that each element was thought about in relation to Susie. We started with a clean sheet of paper. That is a bespoke funeral.

Over 25 years later, this is how we, as a company, approach each funeral, starting with finding out about the person who has died. Then we can help each family to think things through and create a funeral that is tailored, customised, handmade, styled, adapted, suitable, comfortable, made to measure – bespoke.