To help you make a choice, consider the two options.

Along with entombment, casket burial is the most common burial practice in the United States. However, cremation is increasingly popular both because it can be less expensive and because it allows time for scattered family and friends to come together for the funeral ceremony.

As far as the funeral service itself goes, casket or urn burial makes no difference.

In most cases, cremains are placed in an urn before being committed to a final resting place:

• Burial
• Placement in a mausoleum or columbarium
• Internment in a cemetery urn garden
• Scattered (if allowed by state law)

No. Cremation gives you a lot of leeway when it comes to making arrangements:

• A funeral service before cremation
• A memorial service during cremation or afterwards
• A committal service as the cremains are put in their final resting place

You also have a lot of options regarding the place your services are held, including in a place of worship, a funeral home, a crematory chapel, and other locations

There are several options:

• Interred in a cemetery plot
• Kept by a family member (usually in an urn)
• Scattered on private property or another location (depending on local laws)

In any case, you may want to consider some kind of memorial service that acknowledges the life lived and its passing.

Consider these common options for memorializing the cremains of the deceased:

• Ground burial of the urn, usually marked with a bronze memorial or a monument
• Above-ground placement in a columbarium or another mausoleum
• Dispersal in a cemetery scattering garden

Each of these locations gives family members and friends a place to come and honor the dead for years to come.

A person or persons can be named to do the scattering, but it’s a good idea to work with a funeral professional who has experience with the proper practices for dispersal of cremains. Your funeral professional also can help you design a personally meaningful ash scattering ceremony that is as formal or as informal as you want.

Internment in a single plot will depend on the cemetery’s policies. It’s possible that your cemetery allows for multiple cremated remains to be interred in a single grave space, so be sure to ask. You also may be able to use the space next to the spouse.

Through sanitization and preservation, embalming makes it possible to lengthen the time between death and the body’s final disposition. This can be important if family members and friends need time to gather together.

Many grief specialists say that a public viewing helps survivors acknowledge the reality of death. It can be especially important for children, if they are properly prepared for the event and take part in it voluntarily.

Actually, compared to other life events like births and weddings, funerals are not especially costly. Weddings, for instance, can easily cost at least three times as much.

Also, a funeral home is a labor-intensive profit-based business with many demands:

• 24-hour availability
• Upkeep for viewing rooms, chapels, limousines, hearses, and more
• Products like caskets and urns
• Assistance with forms, obits, medical professionals, and more