Losing loved ones is unfortunately a part of life. At some point, we’re all going to have to say our final goodbye, and this is often through a memorial or a funeral. However, there is a third option – a more gentle, kind, and enjoyable option: a celebration of life.
Managing a celebration of life for a client helps to create cherished memories in this alternative memorial service. Read on if you want some tips about types of celebrations of life events, and how to manage one properly.
Understanding the Concept of a Celebration of Life
A celebration of life event is a type of memorial in which guests honor the deceased. This can be by sharing their favorite meal, playing their beloved board games, or going on their favorite walk. Celebrations of life create lasting, positive memories and shared memories for loved ones.
How They Differ From Traditional Funerals
Traditional funerals tend to be a lot more focused on the death of the person. The dress code is often all black, guests are mourning their lost loved one, and the presence of the body reminds people of their loss.
When managing a celebration of life event, you want to create lasting memories that are rooted in positivity. Much like memorial services, flowers are always a nice touch. However, to honor a beautiful life, we suggest as many flowers as can fit into the budget. Nature is joyful, and you want to bring that happy energy to a celebration of life.
Traditional funerals follow a fairly rigid outline of eulogies and speeches, maybe some somber music, and then final prayers. Some funerals have a post-service event, with a light tea and reception. A celebration of life prioritizes the living part of the person, rather than the fact that they are now gone.
Sensitivity When Honoring the Memory of Your Client's Loved One
The most challenging part about hosting a celebration of life event for a loved one is the planning. Your client’s state of mind is nowhere in a position to be organizing events. This is where you come in: as an event manager, you are being asked to assist in a very important life event.
When it comes to a funeral or memorial service, things tend to be more straightforward. But because a celebration of life is so unique to the loved one’s memory, communication becomes key. Creating a personalized service that honors sharing memories of someone you don’t know can be tricky.
Practice actively listening to your client’s wishes. However, they may not always be straightforward. But if you have been attentive in your meetings with them, you may find that you can draw conclusions from what they tell you.  If your client is not sure about a certain aspect of the event, suggest options that you think might be to their liking.
Also, remember to start planning well in advance. This will give you time to put together the perfect ceremony. Practice patience and understanding if the client is not as responsive as usual. They are most probably grieving.
As a way to stay on top of your managing and organizing, we suggest using an event management software system like Perfect Venue. Perfect Venue creates banquet event order (BEO) templates that can help you manage big events like a celebration of life. It can calculate the costs of food, and plan a catering outline.
Your client has trusted you to host their celebration of life event, and you need to be a well-prepared manager to handle the event with sensitivity.
5 Ideas for Hosting Celebration of Life Events
1. Memory Garden
Celebrations of life are called this for a reason. This is the official goodbye to a loved one, and people will be sharing the space with friends and family who know the deceased. As a beautiful lasting tribute, we recommend a Memory Garden.
The basic premise of a Memory Garden is printing pictures of the late loved one with all their friends and family and creating a garden of sorts. If you have access to an outdoor area, you could hang ribbons on tree branches and stick the pictures on the ribbons. As people walk through the actual garden, so will they walk through the life of their late friend.
If you only have access to an indoor space, you can achieve the same effect by hanging the ribbons on the wall or roof.
2. Shared Meal
Perhaps the best way of honoring those foodies in our lives, sharing a favorite meal is the perfect way to pay tribute. What we love about people coming together over a meal is that it’s the ideal space to share stories about your loved one’s life. There are a few ways you can go about doing this.
Restaurant Meal
If your client's loved one had a favorite meal, a beautiful way to honor this person’s life is by sharing in that meal.
You could set up and decorate a large table and manage an intimate meal with the family. This works as both a celebration of life for your lost loved one, and also a way to bring solace to family members.
Potluck
One of the beautiful things about a celebration of life is sharing stories about your loved one. What can appear from moments like these, are stories you may have never heard! Whether this is from friends sharing special memories, or even school friends sharing old memories.
A lovely way to extend this honoring of your client's late loved one is by sharing in a potluck. Much like how different people have different stories to tell, each person could bring a meal that they associate with that person. It’s a fun way to share happy memories.
With either of these options, the logistics can get messy. Ensuring the venue and restaurant are booked and that all the guests will be coming, or organizing what each guest is bringing to the potluck isn’t always easy. Consider using Perfect Venue to help streamline your management skills. You can send out batch emails to guests asking what meals they’re going to bring.
Naturally, with a death, some people might be offline. Perfect Venue has email templates that make the mailing process 3x quicker. If people haven’t responded, you can simply use the “follow-up” template to check in.
3. Location-Specific Celebration
A celebration of life is exactly that: celebrating the life of your lost one. Death can be traumatic for a lot of people, and honoring the person who passed away with family can serve as a healing process.
Most people have a meaningful location in their life. Maybe it’s a beach where they watched the sunset every night with some hot chocolate. Perhaps it's a bar where their favorite songs are always played. It could even be a different city on a different continent where they holidayed once.
As an event manager, the way that you curate the event space can help turn this day into a beautiful celebration of life service.
Let’s say the event is hosted during sunset at your seaside venue. As a way to honor the deceased’s life, you can make sure that the celebration runs as smoothly as possible. Putting provisions in place such as blankets for warmth, tissues for tears, and a warm drink is a way that you can make the day special.
4. Bucket List Party
While a Bucket List Party is aimed at loved ones who have passed away quite young, you can celebrate this for any age. The idea behind this celebration of life is doing all the things your client’s loved one wasn’t able to do before they passed.
Maybe one of your client's loved one’s passions was sports. In this case, you could throw a sports lover party where all their favorite sporting games are included and people have to play. Find out from family and friends what the dearly departed favorite games were and make sure to include those.
For example, let’s say your client has chosen to celebrate at your baseball conference room. Depending on the budget, you could replicate the stadium energy by having game-day food, and even some mini baseball games.
5. Setting Their Name in Eternity
For your client and their loved ones, their lost loved ones' body is gone but their spirit is not. For nature lovers, we have a few ideas that honor the departed.
Name a Star
Wherever you are in the world, you can name a star. This is a beautiful process that sets a loved one forever in eternity.
When managing a celebration of life event like this one, to create those special moments we suggest theming the event with stars. You can ensure there is a working laptop or computer where family members can register the deceased.
Suggest that the client organizes the celebration of life to be in the evening. This way, the close family can celebrate the loved one’s life as the sun sets and stars appear.
Memorial Tree
Much like the naming of the star, personalizing a tree for a late family member sets them in eternity. Tree-naming ceremonies are a lovely way to celebrate the person outside in nature, and forever. Organizing the event to be in the deceased’s favorite park and maybe even by their favorite tree will make it all the more special.
Once they have completed their ceremony, they could move to your venue and share memories or make speeches. You could decorate your venue with nature-inspired ornaments, or even have mini-trees for everyone to take home.
Dedicate a Park Bench
On a similar note to the tree, dedicating a park bench to a loved one can be very special. You can send out emails to friends and family of the deceased asking to raise funds for a plaque that can have a few words written on it.
From here, you can organize this plaque to be attached to a park bench. This will be a reminder of the person every time a loved one walks past it, sits on it, or even for future generations.
Before your client and loved ones go to the bench, you could organize a tea and coffee drink. Your client will most likely have chosen your venue as it will be close to the park bench. You could ensure that warm drinks are available for people to hold as they walk to the park.
Making Space to Talk About Your Deceased Loved One
Because celebrations of life aren’t so clear cut in their format like a funeral, you need to make space for storytelling.
As an event manager, this is where you can craft some time for friends and family to talk about funny anecdotes and touching memories. You can divert to speeches with music cues, or simply announce it to the guests.
Including this in the celebration of life is very important. As everyone will be sharing their favorite memories whilst they look at pictures, drink, and eat, you need to ensure clear-cut speech time.
Conclusion
Managing a celebration of life event can be very rewarding. You are being included in a day that is going to be filled with emotions, and you have the power to make it a positive day.
This can feel like a big responsibility. If you haven’t already, we recommend checking out Perfect Venue to assist with venue event management. You can get a good look at what they have to offer by watching a demo or even booking a free personalized demo.
