Funeral Flowers: How to Select Flowers for a Funeral or Memorial Service | Video

With so many floral options to choose from, it can be confusing and overwhelming to choose the right flowers to use for a funeral service or to send to a bereaved family. Mike Belsito, Co-Founder of Cleveland, Ohio-based eFuneral, discusses the meaning behind funeral flowers in order to help you with your decision.

You can find more articles and videos related to death and dying and funeral planning in eFuneral’s resources section.

Video Transcription/Summary:

I’m Mike Belsito, Co-Founder of eFuneral. This video is going to focus on something that is a part of every funeral service today, just about and pretty much always has been – funeral flowers. Funeral flowers are one of those things that we may not always associate with a funeral service. Regardless it’s certainly a beautiful part of a funeral ceremony. When you see massive floral arrangements laid out and beautiful flowers at a funeral or memorial service – did you know that there’s meaning behind the chosen funeral flowers? In fact, an arrangement of funeral flowers can be chosen and arranged based on the meaning of the specific flower. So we’re going to go through some of those meanings in this video. This way in the future when you’re putting together an arrangement you can keep that in mind.

Carnations: So the first type of flower we’ll talk about is the carnation. The meaning behind the carnation depends on the color; for instance red carnations signify strength, white carnations signify truth and innocence (so you’ll find that often maybe at a funeral service for a child or a younger person), and then there’s pink carnations and they signify remembrance (which is something that’s certainly a common theme at most funeral services).

Chrysanthemums: Then there’s the chrysanthemum, or the ‘mum’ if you will. Usually those are associated with grief. Some people would also associate that flower with the concept of truth as well. So that’s another flower that you would find common in a funeral arrangement.

Lilies: Next there’s the lily. Lilies usually signify peace, purity, even majesty. So it is not surprising that lilies would be included in an arrangement at a funeral service when it has those meanings behind it.

Roses: Then we’ll talk about roses for a minute. As with the carnations, depending on the color of the rose could have a different meaning. For instance white roses, similar to the white carnations, signify innocence, even youthfulness – so again, something you might choose for a funeral service for a younger person. Then there’s red roses – now we all associate love usually with red roses and that’s true. However, respect is usually another common theme that goes along with red roses as well. Then there’s the pink rose. Usually pink roses signify grace, so something again that you might commonly find in a funeral floral arrangement.

So hopefully it is helpful knowing the meaning behind some of these funeral flowers. You know you see these flowers all the time in floral arrangements, but now next time you’re ordering an arrangement or putting together an arrangement for a funeral service you can keep some of these meanings in mind and maybe that will have an impact on how you put together that arrangement.