Honouring Diverse Wishes in Funeral Ceremonies: What Inclusive Practice Really Means

Of all the ceremonies we create as celebrants, funerals carry perhaps the greatest responsibility. A grieving family is placing extraordinary trust in us at the moment when they are most vulnerable. The person they loved most has died, they are exhausted and overwhelmed, and the ceremony we create will become part of their memory of that person forever.

Inclusive funeral ceremonies matter more, I think, than perhaps any other aspect of our practice – because exclusion in these moments is felt with particular intensity. And because the families who are most at risk of feeling excluded are often those who are already carrying the greatest weight.

Who is most likely to feel excluded – and why

When we talk about inclusive funeral ceremonies, it’s worth being specific about where exclusion most commonly occurs, because it helps us know where to direct our attention.

• LGBTQIA+ families and individuals. A person who has lived openly as gay, lesbian, trans, or non-binary may have family members who don’t acknowledge or accept that part of their identity. The celebrant may find themselves navigating a family who wants to erase aspects of the person’s life from their own funeral. Inclusive practice here means honouring the full identity of the person who has died – even when that’s uncomfortable for some of those present. It means using their correct name and pronouns consistently, including the partner or chosen family who meant most to them, and holding space for the complexity that sometimes surrounds these situations.
• People whose deaths are surrounded by stigma. Suicide, addiction, and certain illnesses still carry stigma that can make families feel unable to speak honestly about how their person died, or how they lived. Inclusive funeral ceremonies create space for the truth of a person’s life – including the difficult parts – to be honoured with dignity, rather than edited into something more comfortable.
• People from minority faiths and cultures. A Hindu family, a Muslim family, a Jewish family, a Sikh family – all have specific wishes, traditions, and requirements around death and burial. A celebrant unfamiliar with those traditions may inadvertently overlook or mishandle what they want. The most important thing you can do in these situations is to ask, listen, and follow the family’s lead rather than your own assumptions about what a funeral should include.
• People without conventional family structures. A person whose closest relationships were with chosen family – close friends, a partner the wider family didn’t know well, a community – may have people who loved them deeply and who are grieving intensely, but who aren’t given space or acknowledgement in a ceremony structured around biological family hierarchies. Inclusive practice means asking who mattered most, not assuming you know.

Practical steps towards more inclusive funeral ceremonies

Ask better questions from the start. Rather than a standard questionnaire that assumes a conventional life and a conventional death, build your initial conversation around open questions: Who was this person? Who loved them? Who will feel this loss most deeply? What would they have wanted people to know about them – all of them?

Use the family’s own language. Ask how the family refer to their person – their name, their pronouns, their relationship terms. Then use those consistently throughout the ceremony. If you’re unsure about something, ask again.

Be explicit about your commitment to honouring the whole person. In your first meeting with a family, let them know that you’re here to create a ceremony that truly reflects who their person was.  And that you welcome them sharing anything and everything, even if it feels complicated or unconventional. This explicit permission can open doors that wouldn’t otherwise open.

Know your limits and be honest about them. If you’re unfamiliar with particular requirements, say so, and commit to learning. Consult resources created by people within that tradition. Where appropriate, involve a leader from that community in the ceremony.

Think about who is in the room. An inclusive funeral ceremony considers not just the person who died, but everyone gathered to mourn them. Are there children present? People for whom English is not a first language? People with access needs that should shape how the ceremony is structured?

The Queer Funeral Guide

One resource I want to mention specifically here is the Queer Funeral Guide, created by Ash Hayhurst, which we recommend in our Inclusion and Diversity training. It is an invaluable resource for any celebrant working with LGBTQ+ families and individuals. It addresses with care and specificity many of the situations that can arise in funeral work where someone’s identity intersects with grief and family complexity. I’d encourage every celebrant to read it. And find out more about Ash Hayhurst in this interview they gave us on the blog.

Inclusive funeral ceremonies are not simply about avoiding offence. They are about making sure that at the worst moment of someone’s life, the ceremony they experience genuinely honours the person they lost – all of them, without editing. That is what we are here to do.

Our CPD-accredited Inclusion and Diversity module includes a section on honouring diverse wishes in funeral ceremonies, and points to further reading and resources. Find out more on the website.

If you’re considering funeral celebrancy as a career and want training that prepares you fully — including for the complexity and diversity of the families you’ll serve — I’d love to talk. Book an Informed Decision Session.

Warmly, Dinah
She/Her