A death planning party brings people together to plan their own funeral and talk about their end-of-life arrangements. The aim is to break down the taboos around death and make the funeral planning process less intimidating.
Dee Stokes, the organiser of a recent death planning party in Hobart, Australia, says that funeral planning is an important but challenging task. “It is much better to do it as a group, as a fun activity, rather than a daunting one," she told Australia’s ABC News.
The idea for a death planning party came to Dee having to plan the funeral of her twin sister. "She hadn't really planned any of this stuff and none of us knew what to do,” she said. “It was really confronting and scary and confusing for everybody."
Making funeral planning fun
Death planning parties are designed to give people the chance to look at the ‘nitty gritty' of death and dying in a relaxed atmosphere. Dee said strong emotions - fear, sadness and anxiety - often get in the way of people having funeral discussions, but she wanted to put those to one side: "I've made little gift bags with a whoopee cushion to remind people that [death] doesn't have to be all serious."
The attendees at Dee’s death planning party were in their mid-30s to 40s. With their deaths hopefully decades in the future, the main focus was to think about what they wanted for their funerals so that their loved ones weren’t left to make difficult decisions.
Future final wishes
Not speaking about what we want for our own funerals is an international problem.
ABC reports that, in Australia, fewer than half of people aged 50 or more have made preparations for their funeral. In the UK, SunLife’s Cost of Dying 2024 report says 54% of people don’t even know if their loved one wants to be buried or cremated. Almost 20% don’t know any of their loved one’s funeral wishes.
In the United States, death-planning advocate Amy Pickard describes the decisions that need to be made after someone dies as “death duties… the hellscape of details forced upon a grieving loved one after their person dies.”
Difficult death duties
Following the sudden death of her mother Amy decided to help other people avoid the ‘horrible experience’ she had dealing with her mother’s ‘death duties’. She created a workbook to help people record everyday admin details, but also their final wishes.
Amy realised, however, that people were still struggling to fill the form out on their own. So she started to hold “Good To Go!” parties where people can think about their end-of-life plans in what she described in Oprah magazine as a ‘friendly, safe, open environment filled with good humour, love, laughter, fun music and great food’.
Speaking directly to loved ones about your funeral plans can be difficult. Maybe a death planning party could make it easier.
