An online memorial page is a single web address that holds everything people need after someone dies. The obituary, the date and place of the funeral or memorial service, photographs, and a way for friends and family to respond.
It goes by many names. A memorial website, a tribute page, an online obituary, a funeral webpage, a remembrance page, a virtual memorial. They describe the same thing: one link you can send to everybody instead of repeating the same details on the phone forty times in a week.
An obituary is a piece of writing about the person's life, traditionally printed in a newspaper and now usually published online by the funeral home. A memorial page holds the obituary and adds everything around it: service times, directions, parking, an RSVP, photographs, and somewhere for guests to leave a message.
Put simply, the obituary tells people who died. The memorial page tells them what to do about it. If you are writing one, we have a free obituary template and two examples.
Most often in the first day or two after the death, before the service, while the details are still being arranged. That is when the page does the most work, because it saves the family from telling the same story to every caller.
Some families set one up later, for a celebration of life held weeks or months after the burial or cremation. Others create one on an anniversary, to gather photographs and memories in one place.
There is no wrong time. A page created before the funeral can be added to afterwards.
A photograph of the person, their full name, the dates of their birth and death, and where they were from.
Service details: the date and time of the funeral, memorial service, wake, visitation or graveside, with the address, directions and parking notes. If there is a reception or repast afterwards, that goes on too.
The obituary or eulogy. A photo gallery the whole family can add to. Tributes and condolences from guests, which the family approves before they appear publicly.
Practical things as well. An RSVP so the family knows how many people are coming. A meal signup so friends can bring food without three people arriving with lasagna on the same evening. Links to send flowers or to give to a charity in the person's name.
Traditionally by phone, one call at a time, at the worst possible moment to be making phone calls.
A memorial page replaces that. The family uploads a guest list once, then sends the details to everyone by text or email at the same time. When the time or the location changes, and it often does, one message updates everybody.
You ask them, and the page collects the answers.
Guests tap an RSVP link with no account and no password. The family sees a running count and a list of names. That number matters for practical reasons: the caterer, the seating, the cars, how much food to order for the reception.
A meal train is a schedule that lets friends and neighbours take turns bringing food to a grieving family, so meals arrive steadily over a couple of weeks rather than all at once.
On a memorial page, guests see which evenings are still free, claim one, and say what they are bringing. The family gets a plan instead of a full refrigerator on Tuesday and nothing on Friday.
Many families ask for donations to a charity in place of sympathy flowers, often one connected to the illness the person died of or a cause that mattered to them.
A memorial page can carry both. Guests who want to send funeral flowers can, and guests who would rather give to a charity can do that in the person's name.
Yes, and this is often the point. Relatives who cannot travel can read the obituary, see the photographs, leave a message and give to the charity from wherever they are. If the service is being livestreamed, the link sits on the same page.
Either.
Many funeral homes provide a memorial page as part of their service. The director creates it and invites the family by email, and the family fills in the parts only they can write.
If your funeral home does not offer one, a family can create their own in about five minutes. You need a name and a date to begin. Everything else can be added later.
A family starting one directly pays $45, once. No subscription and nothing recurring, and the charge only happens when the page is ready to share.
Funeral homes pay per case and set their own price for the families they serve.
That is the family's choice. A public page can be found by people searching the person's name, which is usually what a family wants, since that is how distant friends and former colleagues find out. An unlisted page asks search engines not to list it, so only people with the link see it.
It stays online. Published memorials are not deleted and there is nothing further to pay. Families often return to them on birthdays and anniversaries.
Start a memorial