| Mortuary Guide |
| MORTUARY GUIDE RESOURCES |
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| FUNERAL TERMS |
The following are terms you will encounter when planning a funeral:
Alternative Container: An unfinished wood box or other non-metal receptacle without ornamentation, often made of
fiberboard, pressed wood or composition material; it generally costs less than a casket.
Casket: A rigid container usually made of wood or metal, designed to hold remains.
Cemetery Property: A grave, crypt, or niche in a cemetery.
Cemetery Services: Opening and closing graves, crypts or niches; setting up grave liners, vaults or markers; maintaining
cemetery grounds and facilities.
Columbarium: A room or building with niches that hold urns containing cremated remains.
Cremation: A heating process that incinerates human remains.
Crypt: A space in a mausoleum or other building that holds cremated or whole remains.
Direct Cremation: Disposing of remains by cremation without having a formal viewing, visitation, or ceremony with the body
present.
Disposing, or Disposition: Placing cremated or whole remains in their final resting place.
Endowment Care: Maintaining a cemetery facility including grounds, plantings, roadways and water systems.
Endowment Care Fee: Money collected from cemetery property buyers and placed in trust to pay for cemetery maintenance.
Funeral Ceremony: A service commemorating a deceased person with the body present.
Funeral Provider: Any person, partnership or corporation that sells or offers to sell funeral goods and funeral services to the
public.
Funeral Services: Any services that care for and prepare bodies for burial, cremation or other final disposition and arrange,
supervise or conduct a funeral ceremony or final disposition of remains.
Grave: A space in the ground for the burial of remains.
Grave Liner: A type of outer burial container that covers the top and sides of a casket in a grave.
Graveside Service: A service commemorating a deceased person held at a cemetery before burial.
Immediate Burial: Disposing of remains by burial without having a formal viewing, visitation, or ceremony with the body present
before the graveside service.
Interment: Placing remains in a grave, tomb or niche.
Inurnment: Placing cremated remains in an urn.
Marker: An inscribed stone that stands or is laid over a grave.
Mausoleum: A building in which remains are buried or entombed.
Memorial Service: A ceremony commemorating a deceased person without the body present.
Niche: A space in a columbarium, mausoleum or wall to hold an urn.
Outer Burial Container: A structure that partially or completely surrounds a casket in a grave.
Urn: A container to hold cremated remains.
Vault: A type of outer burial container that surrounds a casket in a grave.
