With interment, you can choose burial in the family plot, church garden, or other memorial site. You can also choose a columbarium, which is an arrangement of niches, indoor or outdoor, with memorial identity plaques. This is also sometimes referred to as an urn garden or can be above ground as part of a community mausoleum.

Graveside Services

You can choose to have memorial prayers and religious rites performed at the graveside with cremation, just as you can with a typical earth burial. You can also choose to have a marker or monument as a permanent testimony to the life and the history of the deceased, and as a place of memory for loved ones to visit.

With cremation, you also have other options that aren't available with a typical earth burial.

Scattering the Cremated Remains

Options with scattering remains include scattering within a memorial garden or cemetery (if allowed) with the comfort of an identifying marker, plaque, or memorial book entry to memorialize the loved one; or over water or in some other site loved by the deceased.

You can also do partial scattering, in which some of the cremated remains are scattered and the rest are retained in an urn for permanent interment.

Multiple Urns

Cremated remains can also be placed in two or more urns. This offers the comfort of interment near more than one family member when families are divided by great distances. Smaller versions of specific urns are available which can hold a small amount of the cremated remains; these are referred to as "keepsake" urns and allow family members to keep a small amount of their loved one.