When you know you want a beautiful and fitting tribute but have no idea where to begin how to start or how even to plan one of these events this video is for you we're going to go through the five building blocks and the five foundation pieces that every memorial has in order to help you get started and feel confident beginning your planning journey my name is Christina from new narrative an event planning company that mixes event planning with technology solutions to help families stay connected and gather to commemorate lives without lots of the stress so before we get into the video a reminder to please subscribe to our channel and like and do all that good stuff when it comes to YouTube leave a comment below you can download our family planning guide and I'd love to hear your feedback on this video so let's get to it the first component is the feel and tone of the event so before you start any detail planning you'll want.
To think about the feel and the tone of your event and it's okay if you just have some vague ideas think about how you want your guests to feel when they log out or when they leave your venue in order to get started on thinking about the feel and tone of the event i highly recommend that you journal and it can just be a piece of paper write what you like write what you don't like you'll want to bring those in and consider those as you make the decisions coming up the second big component big building block is your location and this one is a very interesting one since services and ceremonies have looked a lot different since the beginning of the copen 19 pandemic in 2020 so when you think about your memorial event i want you to consider where you'll be convening and take some time if you are convening in person take some time to select a venue that reflects your needs and wants as a family so this can be a variety.
Of needs and wants you'll want to go back to this location over and over for the coming years it can be a location that you never want to go back to it can be a location that's close to your home it can be a location that holds a lot of meaning to your family so for instance if it's a park close by to where your mother lived or if it's a hotel ballroom that your grandparents would always rent out for family reunions or if it was a special location where you want to intentionally travel there to honor and celebrate the life of your loved one you can also host these events totally virtually which means that anybody can log in through a zoom meeting and just be there and be all together and you can see each other through a computer screen now this makes it easier for guests to attend and it is a bit more accessible and there's pros and cons to holding an event virtually or in person but the nice thing about virtual is that you can actually have your.
Family can have your families can have little watch parties so if you are connecting families say from connecticut and vancouver bc and florida and the united kingdom every little location can be a separate small gathering and you can all be together um in more of a hybrid style so you can see and hear each other on the screen and with a technical director director in the background they can help you with all of the technical details and to make sure that everyone is coming through correctly everyone is muted and all of your guests simultaneously are hearing the slideshow.
Songs seeing the pictures and these individual tributes the third aspect to consider and the third building block is your speakers so consider who who the important people in your life are who would you like to ask to speak and say a few words that represent the life and legacy of the person that we're honoring one thing i loved about a recent memorial that i worked on is that the family was very intentional in picking different people to represent different facets of our honoree's life so we were able to hear about her as an activist her as a grandmother her as a friend her as a colleague her as a mother her as just a choir member and it was so beautiful.
Because everybody's the goal of the family was for you as an attendee to come and learn something new about this person about our honorees something you didn't know before and with different speakers representing different facets of somebody's life then you really have that full sick 360 degree recollection of who they were and their life and their legacy and it can be a beautiful time for remembrance and sharing stories and memories and who knows more might come up in the chat and more might come out during the open share we're going to cover this in a different video but there are absolutely more ways to incorporate speakers than just live on screen or live in person so for example having them pre-recorded is a beautiful option.
Because with pre-recorded you can film anywhere anytime on your own terms you can edit you can infuse pictures special songs and you can really create your own custom tribute to this person to be shown on screen at the time of your speech it can be a beautiful a beautiful remembrance number four so the next one on the list after speakers is thinking about your attendees and your invitations so this may change depending on if you're hosting a virtual event or an in-person event and the reason i say that is because the number of people may may differ and if you're hosting an in-person event obviously there are some limitations on the amount of people that you can have in a specific venue cove it aside some venues only have room for say 50 or 400 or for 200 and if you have a bigger group then having a virtual component is definitely something to consider now for virtual events again we use zoom so we are only limited by the.
Thousand-person capacity of zoom so you can send these invitations far and wide and another beautiful thing about hosting a hybrid event is that you can have people attending in.
Person but also streaming in virtually and that essentially is unlimited especially if you stream to Facebook you can possibly have a ton of people there with you in the moment and experiencing this commemoration all together i actually recommend that you create a mind map so put your honoree's name in the center and draw a little circle around it and then from there i encourage you to start branching out so start with associations groups family members just important groups and community sectors that are very important to your family and from there once you have a specific group you can actually do little tiny branches and start to name specific people.
So for instance if we're honoring ted in the middle and ted was part of a car club and had three or four acquaintances say bill was one of his closest friends at the car club and tom was helping to run their virtual meetings maybe those two people you'll want to ask to be speakers at the event because they represent one part of ted's life in on that vein if say ted was a principal then you may ask a couple of important teachers or administrative staff or if ted was a grandfather you may ask one of the grandchildren or do a little video montage of all of the grandchildren speaking again tons of possibilities we'll go through this in a different video.
Finally one of the biggest elements and one of the most personal is music now music definitely sets the tone for your event and this sets the tone at the beginning continues that tone in the middle and of course ends the event on a beautiful note no pun intended when thinking of options i want you to consider songs that meant a lot to your honoree or to your community so were there any special artists or genres or albums that your loved one was fond of do you want to begin the event on a more low key note do you want to infuse some pop hits in there.
Do you want to end with some higher tempo music so that guests leave with a celebratory feeling we recommend selecting the two most important songs that you have or the ones that you deem most important and using these as event bookends well most of your attendees will be there right at the beginning and right at the end um there's a little bit you know the pre-event music they won't hear at all but the most people that you'll have there will hear that last song and that first song at the very end so those are the five foundational elements i hope you found this helpful if you did please write in the comments below let me know what you thought subscribe like please do share this with a friend or a family member if you think that they might find it helpful and we are only an email away if you have any questions the link is in the bio download our family planning guide too and check out our other videos here or uh here.
And this is Christina from new narrative we'll see you in the next video.
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