Losing a loved one for whatever reason can be one of the most traumatic and painful events that most people will have the unfortunate displeasure of experiencing. It can be an extremely difficult thing to come to terms with, that the person won’t be around to interact with anymore. There are lots of customs around the world when somebody passes on and many different ways of dealing with the body. Many cultures burn their dead whereas an equal amount of people across the world bury them. It’s normally down to your individual country and culture. Being from the western hemisphere, it is customary to bury the dead.

One thing that can help is to have grave memorials, to give people something a little more substantial to look at rather than a mere flat piece of ground and can go a long way to making you feel as if you are appropriately honouring the memory of the person who is now deceased. After all that is the whole purpose of this exercise is to give the person you love a proper sendoff, but what are the most important things to keep in mind when you are going through the design process? Well let’s take a look at a few suggestions

Type of Memorial

The very first thing that you will need to choose is the style of grave memorial that you want. Do you want just a headstone type memorial or are you looking for more of a striking and larger statue type memorial? Or maybe you think that that you would like to commission a flat marker with a plaque. It’s really all down to you and your fellow friends and family really.

Generally speaking, low space, indoor or other environments where the placement of a large, ornate statue or design would either be impractical or unsuitable, a flat marker could be just as powerful a memorial with many more poignant examples of these kinds of memorials being prevalent throughout the world and are a lot cheaper than the extreme labour of love that something like a statue is. However, if you think that the person you are committing would enjoy it, or you want to make a real testament to how important they were too you then a statue incorporating various different things about their lives, such as photographs and poems will be a lasting tribute to their memory.

Type and quality of material

More often than not, the first consideration of the kinds of materials that you want to use will be one of the main deciding factors that will determine what kind of budget you will work with. So it’s really important that you consider this stage of the process with a great amount of care. There are obvious kinds of material like granite, marble and other heavy types of weatherproof and durable stones are used due to the fact that they are laminate, which means they do not absorb degrading water, durable and normally can be highly customizable in terms of colour and inscription, to match your design.

The other reason is that these stones hold some level of significance, with marble until recently being seen as a luxury item that only the rich could afford, and that is still in our mentality to give the people we love the best that we can. Memorial stonemasons can help with this particular need. Contact them thru the link for more information.

Cemetery or location regulations

However, before you have your heart set on anything and before you even start the process ideally, you need to get a clear idea of the sort of things that your planned cemetery will not allow so you can avoid them.  Generally speaking, cemeteries will publish a clearly laid-out list that will afford you clear guidelines from the cemetery about what is actually permitted in terms of the content of the memorial. As you could imagine this is to avoid people having rude or offensive gravestones or grave memorials and to prevent other mourners from having to see them.

Normally they only restrict certain things such as material deemed to be offensive and controversial or inappropriate symbols and language, however dependent on the specific customs of the graveyard in question, there may be extra stipulations around things like the location of the grave, they can limit anything from large sizes to bright or inappropriate colours and even the overall artistic nature of your memorial if it is deemed unacceptable in some way.