Dr. Patricia Caldwell(click for bio)

Embrance Ambassador

Should the Funeral Home Make the Slideshow, or Should You?

Somewhere in the arrangement meeting, a page gets turned and somebody says the tribute video is taken care of, just send us the photographs. Most families say yes on the spot, and most of the time that is the right answer. It is a real offer, made by people who are good at it, and the person making it is trying to lift something off you.

What almost nobody is told is what else they have just agreed to. A number of photographs. A number of songs. A date, earlier than the service, after which the file is finished. None of it is unreasonable, and none of it is being concealed from you. It is simply that nobody thinks to mention it, and it is much easier to live with on Tuesday than to find out on Friday.

So this is not a case against handing it over. It is the half of that conversation that does not happen, laid out so that whichever way you go, you went that way on purpose.

What the funeral home's version gives you

Read this part carefully rather than skimming to the catch, because a great deal of it is genuinely good, and the rest of the page only means anything once you know what you would be giving up.

It will play. This is the largest thing on the page and it is worth more than it sounds. The usual disaster with a tribute video is not that it looked wrong. It is that it would not open, or opened with no sound, or came up as a small bright rectangle marooned in the middle of a very large screen, and this was discovered at ten past eleven with the room already filling. A file made by that funeral home, on that funeral home's equipment, for the screen in that particular room, does not fail that way. They ran one on it last week.

It is quick, and none of the hours are yours. Somebody who has assembled several hundred of these does in half an hour what will take you an evening the first time through. On your end the whole transaction is usually an upload link, a folder of photographs, and one phone call to confirm they arrived.

It is commonly already paid for. The tribute video is often folded into the service package rather than billed as its own line, though that is not universal and it is worth asking plainly which it is at your funeral home.

It is one fewer thing in a week that is made entirely of things. That is not a small argument. Depending on the week you are having, it may be the only argument you need.

What you are trading

Now the other side, and it reads best as a list of constraints rather than a list of grievances, because that is what it is. Everything below is common practice rather than anybody's stated rule. It varies a great deal between one funeral home and the next, and the only authoritative version is the one your own director gives you when you ask.

A photograph count. Many homes cap it, commonly somewhere around sixty. That number is not stingy. Sixty photographs, at the six seconds each one needs in order to actually land, is a six-minute film, which sits comfortably inside the five to ten minutes a seated room follows without effort. The real question is not whether sixty is enough for a service. It is whether the ones you would have to leave out are ones you will still be thinking about in a month.

A song count. Three is the figure you will hear most often, and it usually arrives with the assumption that you will name titles and the funeral home will find them. If a particular recording has to be the one, say so on the first day and offer to hand it over as a file. Something a busy person can drop straight in is a much smaller ask than more music in general, and it is frequently the difference between a yes and a regretful no.

The look is chosen for you. The theme, the border, the way the photographs sit inside the frame. These are generally matched to the stationery you already picked, and generally decided by whoever is building it rather than by you.

A deadline that is not the day of the service. This is the one that catches families out. Production commonly closes a day or two ahead, and once it closes the file is finished. A photograph that a cousin finally digs out on Friday night is late, even though the service is not until Saturday.

The running order is quietly your job. Some homes will only keep photographs in a particular sequence if you hand them over numbered, and otherwise they land in whatever order the computer happened to read them in. Ask which it is, and if the answer is that you should number them, number them.

None of this is anyone being difficult with you. It is a small staff absorbing an extra hour of careful hand work per family, on a clock set by other people, during the same days they are filing paperwork, coordinating with a cemetery, and giving three other families the same attention they are giving you. The caps are how any of it gets delivered on time.

When to let them do it

Plainly, and with nothing attached: for a great many families, handing this over is the correct decision.

Let them do it if you are short on time. Let them do it if computers have always been somebody else's department and you are not about to enjoy them becoming yours this week. Let them do it if you do not have strong feelings about the music, or if there is no particular song and you are not going to invent one under pressure. Let them do it if the photographs are already in one place and there are not very many. And let them do it if the honest truth is that you cannot pick up one more task, which is an extremely common reason and an entirely sufficient one.

If any of that is you, send the photographs, say thank you, and let it go out of your head. It will be good. It will be dignified. It will play on the day. Nobody in that room will know or wonder who assembled it, and your aunt in the third row will cry at the photograph from the kitchen either way. There is no version of this where building it yourself was the loving choice and handing it over was the lazy one.

When to do it yourself

The other side is just as plain, and it is mostly about the photographs rather than about wanting to make something.

You have more than the cap, and the extras matter. Often sixty is the right number and the ones that go were duplicates of each other. Sometimes it is not, and cutting to sixty means a whole decade goes, or the only surviving picture of a brother goes. And if the plan is for it to run quietly in the corner during a visitation rather than be watched from a seat, the ceiling stops mattering much at all, because nobody is standing in front of it from beginning to end. Work out which of those you have before you accept anybody's number.

There is a specific recording. Not a song like it. The actual one, off the actual record, with the scratch in it. Handing over a file gets you that; naming a title and hoping frequently does not.

Photographs are still arriving. In most families they keep coming right up to the night before, because people go home, open a drawer, and find something. If you know that is happening, a deadline two days out will cost you the best of them. Building against a clock that short is its own job, and what to do when the service is in two days works through it.

You want to watch it before the service. Not a description of it. The thing itself, all the way through, with the sound up, with the option of changing your mind about the order afterward and actually doing it.

There is video. A few seconds of them talking, waving, blowing out candles. Short clips can go into a slideshow you build yourself, and a voice in the room does something no photograph can.

What doing it yourself actually involves

The honest cost is about an evening, and it is not the evening you are imagining.

Gathering is the long part. Getting the photographs off a phone, out of a shoebox, and away from three relatives who each keep meaning to look is most of the total work, and here is the thing worth noticing: you are going to do that part either way. The funeral home's version needs exactly the same folder. Nothing you do in that stage is spent by choosing one path over the other. Once the folder exists, assembling it is the short half, and it is far less technical than people expect.

Then the reassurance the first section earned. Doing it yourself does not mean picking up the playback risk. What you hand over at the end is a standard video file on a USB drive, which is precisely the sort of file the funeral home's own version would have produced, and their equipment does not care who made it. Deliver it a day early, then ask them to run it on the actual screen in the actual room while you stand there and watch. Five minutes puts the entire risk back on their side of the desk, where it belongs. Leave a second copy with them on something else while you are at it.

Which tool to build it in is a separate question, and a tiresome one to research on a deadline, so we keep it on its own page: our comparison of memorial slideshow makers covers the options and what each actually costs to export.

For our own part, so you can weigh it against the constraints above: Embrance takes up to 300 photographs, short video clips included, so the cap stops being the thing that shapes the slideshow. You send one link to the family and what relatives add from their own phones lands in the slideshow directly instead of scattered across your text messages, which also means the folder is still open on Friday night. You watch the film play while you build it, rather than exporting and hoping. Music is either the small built-in set of gentle instrumental tracks or audio files of your own, one or the other rather than a mixture of both, and there is no fixed number of songs; using your own songs goes through how that works. What comes out at the end is a 1080p MP4, which is a USB drive and a five-minute test away from being finished.

A quick way to decide

Five questions. Answer them fast, without arguing with yourself.

1. Are there more than sixty photographs you would genuinely miss?
2. Does a particular recording have to be the one?
3. Are relatives still sending things, and will they be until the night before?
4. Do you want to watch it through beforehand and be able to change it afterward?
5. Is there video of them?

No, or one yes: hand it to the funeral home. You are not giving up anything you will notice, and you are getting back an evening you badly need.

Any two yeses: build it yourself, then give them the file. Two yeses means the constraints are pushing on something that actually matters to this family, and the work is smaller than the regret.

Still genuinely torn: ask your funeral director three questions, in one call. How many photographs will you take, how does the music work, and when is your cutoff. The answers vary far more between funeral homes than anyone expects, and often the decision makes itself the moment you have them.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the funeral home make the slideshow?

Most will offer to. Assembling a tribute video from photographs the family supplies is standard at the great majority of funeral homes, and it is commonly presented as part of the arrangement rather than as something to opt into. You are not obliged to accept it. The other option, at essentially every funeral home, is that you build it yourself and hand over the finished file for them to play, and neither choice is unusual or awkward to ask for.

Is the funeral home slideshow free?

It is usually included in the service package rather than billed as its own charge, which is not quite the same thing as free, since it sits inside a total you are paying. Some homes do price it separately. Funeral homes in the United States give you an itemized price list, so the reliable way to find out is to ask where the tribute video appears on yours, and whether declining it changes the figure at the bottom.

How many photos will the funeral home accept?

Commonly somewhere around sixty, though it varies enough between funeral homes that the only number worth acting on is the one yours gives you. Sixty is not an arbitrary limit: at the six seconds a photograph needs in order to register, sixty runs about six minutes, which sits comfortably inside the five to ten minutes a seated room follows without effort. If you have considerably more than the cap and the extras are ones you would miss, building it yourself removes the ceiling. On Embrance you can use up to 300 photographs, short video clips included.

Can I make my own slideshow and give it to the funeral home?

Yes, and it is a routine thing to do. Export a standard video file, bring it on a USB drive, and ask them what they accept before you export rather than after. The step people skip is the important one: get it to them a day early and ask to play it on the actual screen in the actual room while you are there. Leave a second copy on a different device as well. Once it has played once on their equipment, the risk is gone.

When is the deadline to give the funeral home the slideshow?

Earlier than you would guess, and it is worth asking on the first day rather than the last. If they are building it, photographs are commonly wanted a day or two before the service, and changes after that point are often not possible. If you are building it, aim to have the file in their hands the day before, so there is room to test it and still fix something. Deadlines differ from one funeral home to the next, so ask your director for the actual date instead of working from a general rule.