You do not always have to wait to cremate a deceased person, but most funeral homes and crematoriums in the United States will wait three days before proceeding with either cremation or burial. This waiting period allows grieving family and friends to make arrangements for a memorial service or funeral, and provides time for transportation and the service itself. Additionally, the extra time allows the funeral home and crematorium to obtain a death certificate and the immediate family's permission to cremate. If your loved one has pre-planned for a direct cremation without a memorial service, you may be able to have your loved one cremated immediately, depending on your cremation provider.
A good starting estimate is to assume one pound of a person's weight while alive will produce one cubic inch of cremated remains. Therefore, if a person weighed 100 pounds, you can expect to receive about 100 cubic inches of ashes. A suitable urn for a 100lb person should be able to hold a bit over 100 cubic inches of ashes, leaving some room at the top to avoid the ashes overflowing or spilling over the lip of the urn. All standard adult urns will be appropriate, although you may also be able to use a medium-sized urn if it has a volume of over 100 cubic inches.
If you plan to keep all the ashes within one urn, choose an urn size that can hold the full volume of ashes you expect to receive. One pound of body weight will roughly correspond to one cubic inch of ashes, so you can use the weight of your loved one to estimate what size urn will be appropriate. Most adults will be able to use a standard-sized urn (also known as an adult urn), which has a volume in the range of 200 cubic inches. Make sure the urn's volume is slightly larger than your estimated volume of ashes, to avoid the urn overflowing during closure. If you are sharing or dividing ashes among family members, choose an urn that is smaller than a standard-sized urn, because you will not need to store the full volume of ashes. Discuss with your loved one how you plan to divide the ashes, including the number of people that will receive ashes and whether the ashes will be divided in equal portions.
As a rough estimate, someone who weighed 200 pounds while alive would have about 200 cubic inches of cremated remains. One pound of a person's weight generally equals one cubic inch of cremated remains. However, a more precise estimate can be found through our urn size calculator, which takes into account age, height, gender, and bone mass to calculate ash volume and suggest a recommended urn size.
Vase-style urns seal with a threaded closure on the lid, while box-style urns seal with additional screws that hold the lid in place. Keepsake urns and cremation jewelry urns will also have a type of secure lid that seals, usually featuring a threaded closure. These urns will all safely hold ashes without opening, but for further peace of mind, you may choose to additionally seal a lid with silicone, resin, or epoxy glue. To permanently seal an urn using glue, only a small amount of glue is necessary.
Showering with cremation jewelry isn't a good idea, because you risk damaging the jewelry piece or introducing water into the ashes compartment. To protect your cremation jewelry, you should set it in a dry place before performing routine hygiene tasks.
For members of Christianity, scattering ashes is considered a sin. The Church believes that while cremation is acceptable, a person's cremated remains must be kept together so that they may be successfully resurrected in the future. Non-Christian religions and agnostic & atheist households are not subject to this belief.
There is no mention of scattering ashes in the Bible, but the Catholic Church prohibits scattering because it teaches that a person's body should be interred in a sacred resting place (i.e., graveyard, which is a cemetery located on church grounds). Cremation is permitted under the basis that cremated remains are treated as if they were a whole body, and the act of scattering goes against this practice.
Selecting the right urn size is important to ensure you have an urn that can accommodate your loved one's remains. It can be distressing to discover that an urn you picked is too small for your loved one. Fortunately, a standard-sized urn is properly sized to hold the full volume of ashes from most adults, which can take some of the guesswork out of choosing urn sizes. Use our urn size calculator to estimate the approximate volume you will need for your loved one's ashes, and when in doubt, always size up.
Most metal cremation urns are vase-shaped with a threaded lid, which means that the lid uses a twist mechanism to open and close. To open a metal cremation urn and remove the lid, unscrew the top lid counter-clockwise.
Most wood urns are box-shaped and have a removable bottom panel that is held in place via threaded screws. After the screws have been tightened, some people may choose to add glue to seal where the edges of the bottom panel meet the urn, but this is a matter of preference.
A wood urn, metal urn, or any type of urn should have a size that corresponds with its intended use. If a person's complete ashes will be stored within one urn, the size of the urn should be large enough to accommodate the full volume. A general guideline is to assume that at least one cubic inch of volume will be necessary per pound of body weight. For example, a person who weighed 125 pounds would need an urn with a volume of over 125 cubic inches. Wood urns also come in keepsake and medium sizes for holding a portion of ashes, and extra-large and companion sizes for holding more than 200 cubic inches of remains.
Cremation does not require blood or any other fluids in the body to be drained. However, if a viewing or open casket funeral is planned for your loved one prior to cremation, they will need to be embalmed first, which involves draining blood from the body and replacing it with formaldehyde. This process helps preserve the body by slowing the rate of decomposition. Embalmed bodies can still be cremated, but an embalming is not necessary for cremation. If your loved one will not be viewed post-mortem, you do not need to have them embalmed.
If your husband (or spouse) has passed away, keeping your husband's ashes at home is a respectful way to honor your spouse's memory and keep him close to you. You may wish to consider the preferences of other family members, and split the ashes if there are multiple people who would like to keep a portion of ashes.
Christianity has always practiced burial, but due to the rising popularity of cremation in modern times, most Christian denominations today permit cremation even if they encourage burial as a first choice. However, Eastern Orthodox Christians still don't believe in allowing cremation, and the Eastern Orthodox Church forbids it. Historically, this ban was enacted because cremation was viewed as pagan, and denied the value of the human body and creation by God.
For couples that wish to both be cremated, companion urns allow their ashes to be stored together after death. The ashes of an average adult typically require about 200 cubic inches of space, so companion urns have a capacity of at least 400 cubic inches combined. They can have either separate compartments or a single large space to accommodate two or more cremated bodies in one urn. When placing the remains of multiple people in one companion urn, you can choose to keep the ashes separate in bags or pour them together into the urn, mixing the remains.
At In the Light Urns, urns are engraved using one of several different methods, depending on the type of urn. We engrave our urns using laser engraving, diamond drag engraving, and sand blast engraving. Laser engraving uses a focused laser beam to etch designs or text onto a surface, and is appropriate for wooden urns. Diamond drag engraving uses a diamond tip to physically carve designs into our metal urns. If a metal urn features a wrapped design, like our Winter Wolf Moon urns, we use sand blast engraving to blow sand across the stenciled surface of the urn and wear away the top layer of the design. Our urns are all stocked and engraved within one warehouse.
Scattering urns are designed to allow easy dispersion of ashes in the air or water, and have different shapes depending on the type of scattering. They can be made from biodegradable materials like paper and fiber or durable materials like wood and metal. If a scattering takes place on land, an appropriate scattering urn may be a scattering tube that features an easy-open hole or removable lid to aid the pouring of ashes. Water scattering, where cremated remains are released into the water, can use either scattering tubes or biodegradable urns that are directly placed in the water to sink.
Cremated remains entering the United States have no permit or importation requirements. These "ashes," which are processed bone fragments left over from the cremation process, are sterile because any tissue, blood, or other decomposable material that can transmit disease has been burned away during cremation. Other human remains that require no permit for importation include clean and dry bones, hair, teeth, and finger or toe nails. A deceased person's body that is entering the United States for later burial or cremation must be accompanied by a death certificate and be cleared for entry.