Order of Service Booklets: A Gentle Guide for Families
What goes in an order of service booklet, how to word it, and how many to print. A practical guide for families planning a funeral in Australia.
The first order of service booklet I ever made was for my grandmother, at my own kitchen table, four days after she died.
An order of service booklet is the printed guide handed to guests at a funeral. It sets out the order the service runs in, the readings and songs, and the people speaking. Most run four to eight pages at A5 size, with photographs of the person who died.
Nobody hands you instructions for this. You are asked to make a printed object about the most important person in your life, in under a week, while you are not sleeping properly. Below is what goes inside one, how to word it without freezing, how many to print, and how to make it feel like the person rather than like a form.
What is an order of service booklet, and does every funeral need one?
An order of service booklet is the printed program guests follow during a funeral, and no, it is not compulsory. It exists to do two jobs: it tells people what is happening and when to stand, and it gives them something to take home.
That second job is the one that outlasts the day. Guests put the booklet in a drawer, a Bible, a glovebox. Years later it is often the only printed object with that person's face and dates on it.
If the service is small and informal, a single A5 card can do the work instead. If there are hymns, multiple speakers, or guests who did not know the family well, the booklet earns its place.
What do you actually put in an order of service booklet?
The standard contents are the front cover, the service order, one or two readings, the acknowledgements, and a back cover image. Everything else is optional and should only be there if it matters to your family.
A typical eight-page A5 booklet runs like this:
Front cover. Full name, dates of birth and death, one photograph.
Welcome page. The celebrant or clergy name, the venue, the date and time.
The service order. Entrance music, welcome, eulogy, readings, reflection, committal, exit music.
Readings and poems printed in full, so guests can read along
Photo pages. Three to six images across their life.
Acknowledgement. A short thank you from the family, and details of the wake.
Back cover. A closing image or a single line.
The service order is the only page guests genuinely need. Everything else is for holding memories.
What should the wording sound like?
Write it the way you would say it out loud to someone who loved them. Formal funeral language is not a requirement, and it often puts distance between the booklet and the person it is about.
"Dad's favourite song, played too loud, as always" does more work than "musical reflection". It’s the small details about the person that carry the feeling, adjectives that announce the feeling tend to make things feel more robotic and templated.
For the family acknowledgement, three sentences is plenty. Name the people who helped, thank the guests for coming, and say where the wake is. You do not owe anyone a eulogy in print, it’s a choice to print it in the booklet if that’s something that means a lot to your family.
One practical note: check the spelling of every name, twice, with someone outside the immediate family. Misspelled grandchildren are the single most common error I see, and the one families care about the most.
How many order of service booklets should you print?
Print your expected guest count plus 15 to 20 percent, then add ten for the family. Running out is something people remember, and reprinting on the morning of the service is not realistic.
Funeral directors will usually give you an attendance estimate based on the death notice and the venue. Regional services often draw more people than families expect, because the whole town comes.
The extras are not waste. Relatives who could not travel will ask for one, and families frequently post them interstate for weeks afterwards – have a look here for a fuller breakdown of print quantities by service size.
Most regional print shops will turn A5 booklets around in 24 to 48 hours, and the paper weight matters more than you would think for something people keep.
Template, funeral home, or bespoke: which one fits the week you are in?
Choose based on time and energy, not budget alone. All three produce a booklet. They differ in how much of the work lands on you, and how much of the person ends up on the page.
| Included with the funeral director | DIY template suite | Personalised service | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | Usually bundled into the invoice | Around $79 + Printing | From $395 (50 Booklets included in the price) + Additional Printing for services over 50 guests |
| Turnaround | Set by their schedule | Same day, you control it | Roughly 3 to 5 days |
| You supply | Photos and text | Photos and text | Photos and text, and a conversation |
| Best when | You want everything on one invoice | You want it to look right and can spend an hour | You want it handled, and you want it kept |
The funeral home bundled option is the reason so many booklets look the same. It is typically laid out in Word or, increasingly, generated by ChatGPT against a fixed house template, which is why families often describe them as correct but cold.
If you have one hour and someone in the family who is calm with a computer, a template suite closes most of that gap for around $79
DIY Template Suites — the template suites, set up in Canva.
What makes a booklet feel like the person rather than a form?
Specific objects do it, a jersey, a ute, a sewing basket, a fishing rod, a particular dog: one hand-drawn object of their life on the cover changes the whole thing.
This is the part I ask families about on the phone, and it is never the answer I expect. One family told me their father's hands always smelled of two-stroke fuel and that he liked to tinker. I made the choice to carry this through the designs and created a watercolour of an old mower he used to self-service. The best part was that the family was able to provide me with an old image of him and the machine, and the most beautiful part was his wife’s reaction when she saw it.
Photographs carry the same weight when they are chosen for truth rather than for flattery. The slightly blurry one at the kitchen bench usually beats the studio portrait — how to choose photographs that actually look like them.
Clinical psychologist Dr Kerrie Noonan, speaking to the Australian Seniors Cost of Death 2.0 Report research, has noted that services failing to capture the essence of a person can affect how people grieve afterwards. The booklet is a small part of that, and it is the part that stays in the drawer.
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A: A5 is the Australian standard, printed as a folded A4 sheet. Four pages suits a short service, eight pages suits a full service with readings and photographs. A5 sits comfortably in a handbag or a pocket, which matters because guests take them home.
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A: A DIY template suite costs around $79 and is reusable across the whole service. Bespoke design starts from $395. Funeral directors usually bundle a basic booklet into the overall invoice, which averaged $8,045 for a cremation in the 2023 Australian Seniors Cost of Death 2.0 Report.
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A: The celebrant or clergy member sets the service order, and the family supplies the names, readings, photographs and acknowledgement. Most celebrants will email you a running sheet within a day or two of your first meeting, and that becomes the spine of the booklet.
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A: Yes. A Canva template suite is the most common path, because it holds the layout, fonts and print settings for you while you drop in photos and text. Budget about one hour, and have someone outside the household check every name.
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Q: What is the difference between an order of service and a celebration of life booklet?
A: An order of service follows a structured ceremony with set elements like a committal. A celebration of life booklet is usually looser, more photo-led, and built around stories rather than sequence — the difference between the two formats
Can someone just do this for you?
Yes. That is the entire reason The Farewell Studio exists.
You send photographs and whatever you have written down so far, even if it is dot points in your notes app. We talk on the phone for twenty minutes about who they were, what they drove, what they grew, what they always said. I design the booklet, handle the printing, and it arrives ready for the day.
You don’t have to shuffle layouts around, or choose the right font to represent your loved one. I will create your design, send you an approval to check all the details and make any adjustments, then I handle the rest. So all you have to do is show up on the day and the booklets are there.
I started doing this after making the booklets for my own grandparents, at a point when I had no capacity left for anything that required a decision. This is the version I wish had existed for my family that week.
