If you've never organised a funeral before, staring at a blank page and trying to write an order of service can feel impossibly overwhelming. You're exhausted and grieving, and suddenly someone is asking you to make decisions you're not equipped to make right now. Where do you even start?
Start with the three parts every order of service needs: their name and dates on the cover, the running order of the service, and a short thank you from the family. Everything else, a tribute, a poem, the wake details, can be added once those are down.
This guide won't be prescriptive, because there's no single right way to farewell someone you love. But it will give you words to start from, and hopefully make one part of an incredibly hard week a little bit easier.
What is an order of service?
An order of service is a printed guide that helps guests follow a funeral, memorial, or celebration of life. Think of it as a gentle map of the service. It tells people where they are and what comes next, so they can be present rather than wondering what happens after the first reading.
It's also one of the few things from that day people hold onto. If you're still working out what goes inside and how many pages you need, start with the order of service booklet guide. This post is about the words.
How do you write the front cover?
Keep the cover simple: an opening line, their full name, and their dates. That's all the cover needs to do.
The opening line sets the tone of the whole service:
"In loving memory of" is traditional and suits most services
"Celebrating the life of" feels lighter, and suits a celebration of life
"A farewell to" sits somewhere in between
Or no opening line at all, just their name
Write dates in full, with no "th" or "st", and a spaced dash between them:
In loving memory of
Margaret Anne Collins
14 March 1941 – 2 September 2026
Many families add a short phrase underneath. "Beloved husband, father and friend." "Nan to many, friend to all." "Gone fishing." Choose the one that sounds like the way people actually talked about them.
How do you word the running order?
Give each part of the service a short label, then who's doing it and their relationship to the person. The relationship matters more than you'd think. It tells guests who is standing at the front, especially the ones who didn't know the whole family.
A typical running order looks like this:
Entrance music: "Song Title" by Artist
Welcome: Jenny Hart, celebrant
Reading: "Poem Title" read by Sarah Collins, granddaughter
Eulogy: Michael Collins, son
Reflection: Photographs of Margaret's life
Tribute: David Moore, lifelong friend
Farewell: Jenny Hart, celebrant
Exit music: "Song Title" by Artist
Your celebrant or minister will usually send you a running sheet within a day or two of your first meeting, and that becomes the spine of this page. If a reading is being spoken, print it in full so guests can follow along ([INTERNAL LINK: /blog/how-to-choose-funeral-readings-and-poems — "choosing readings and poems that sound like them"]). If there's a slideshow during the reflection, the label can say so ([INTERNAL LINK: /blog/funeral-photo-slideshow-guide — "planning the photo slideshow"]).
How do you write a short life tribute for the booklet?
Write three to five sentences: where they came from, what they did, who they loved, and what people will remember them for. This isn't the eulogy. It's the version a guest can read in thirty seconds while they wait for the service to start.
Margaret was born in Orange in 1941, the eldest of five. She trained as a nurse, married Jim in 1963, and raised three children on a farm outside Molong. She never missed a grandchild's birthday, and never once let anyone leave her kitchen hungry. She will be remembered for her laugh, her scones, and her firm belief that a cup of tea fixes most things.
The last sentence does the most work. Specific things, a laugh, a recipe, a saying, carry more feeling than words like "kind" or "loving". If you're writing the eulogy as well, this can be its shortest possible summary — writing the eulogy when you don't know where to start.
How do you word the thank you and wake details?
Keep the thank you to two or three sentences, and put the wake details straight after it so guests know where to go.
The family thanks you for being here today, and for the love and support you have shown us. We are especially grateful to the staff at [Care Home] for caring for Mum so gently in her final months.
Please join us after the service for refreshments at [Venue], [Address].
If the family would like donations instead of flowers, add one line:
In lieu of flowers, donations to [Charity] would be warmly appreciated.
You don't need to thank everyone by name. Naming the people who cared for them, like nurses, carers, or a particular neighbour, is usually enough.
How formal should the wording be?
Write it the way you'd say it out loud to someone who loved them. Formal funeral language isn't required, and it can put distance between the booklet and the person it's about.
"Dad's favourite song, played too loud, as always" does more than "musical reflection". It's fine to mix the two, keeping the running order clear and simple while letting the tribute and the cover phrase sound like the family.
How do you check it before it goes to print?
Read every name and date out loud, then give it to someone outside the immediate family to check again. Misspelled names, especially grandchildren's, are the most common error, and the one families mind most.
Check that every reading, song and speaker in the booklet matches the celebrant's final running sheet. Last-minute changes to the service are common, and the booklet is often the last thing to be updated.
FAQs: Writing an Order of Service
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A: Mostly tone. "In loving memory of" is traditional and suits a formal funeral. "Celebrating the life of" feels lighter and suits a celebration of life or a service the family wants to feel uplifting. Neither is more correct, so choose the one that fits the service you're planning.
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A: Usually not. The order of service is about their life, and most families keep the cause of death private or leave it to the eulogy if they want it said at all. Thanking the carers or hospital staff is a gentle way to acknowledge a long illness without naming it.
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A: Usually the family, working from the celebrant's or minister's running sheet. The celebrant sets the structure, and the family supplies the names, readings, tribute and thank you. If writing feels like too much, a designer can help with the wording as well as the layout.
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A: Choose the simplest version everyone can live with, and save the rest for the eulogy or the wake. The booklet only needs to be right, not complete. Many families find the short tribute is where agreement comes easiest, because it's built from facts people share.
You don't have to find the words alone
Plenty of families write their own order of service, and there's nothing wrong with that. If you have the time and the energy, it can feel meaningful. My template suites include a wording guide for exactly this, so you're never starting from a blank page.
But for many families in the thick of grief, handing this one piece to someone else is a relief. A good designer will do more than make it look beautiful. They'll help you find the words, suggest ways to personalise it, and make sure the final result feels like the person it's honouring rather than a template pulled from a word document.
If you'd like help, I'm here. No pressure, no complicated process, you share what you can, and I'll take it from there — see how I can help.
