Burial Options

Making a decision between a burial service or a cremation service may be especially difficult for you, yet making this decision is one of the first choices you must make. To make the decision easier, we provide you with information about the different burial options you can select. Although your initial decision for the disposition of the body is between interment and cremation, there are several variations on each.

Whichever choice you make, the body will eventually return to its natural elements.

Burial Options

• It can be interred (earth burial).
• It can be entombed in a crypt within a mausoleum (above-ground burial).
• It can be buried at sea.
   

Why people choose a burial service

Although the trend is moving toward cremation, the greater part of North Americans still chooses to bury their deceased and to be buried themselves. Here are some reasons you might choose a burial service.

1. Burial is traditional within your family, religious group, or geographical area. For example, in the United States today, about 79 percent choose burial. In Canada, the rate is about 64 percent.
2. You do not like the idea of the body being "cremated".You prefer to have the body slowly return to the elements.
3. You want to set a monument on the grave of a loved one. Perhaps you want to visit the grave in the days to come, and you find a cemetery more appealing than say, a columbarium.

Decisions You Must Make If You Choose Burial

• Whether or not the body is to be embalmed
• Which kind of casket (or coffin) will house the body
• Whether to buy a casket, rent one, or build your own
• Whether or not the cemetery requires a vault or grave liner
• Which cemetery to use
• What kind of plot
• What to put on the gravestone