An Irish funeral moves faster than most. A death notice goes up on RIP.ie in the
morning, the reposing is that evening, and the burial follows the next day. The
question is rarely which arrangement suits. It is whether there is time to send
one at all, where it should go, and whether the family wanted flowers in the
first place.
RIP.ie is the first thing to check, before ringing a florist. The notice carries
the funeral home, the times of the reposing, the church, the hour of the Mass,
and the line that decides everything else: whether the family has asked for
flowers or for donations instead.
The shape of the few days
Most Irish funerals still run on the same sequence, though the pace varies by
county and by family.
- Reposing. The body lies at the funeral home, or at the family home in
parts of the country where that is still usual. Callers come in the evening,
often for two or three hours. This is where the bulk of sent flowers arrive.
- The removal. The coffin goes to the church, traditionally the evening
before the funeral. Many families now fold this into the morning of the Mass,
so it can be a separate evening or not happen as its own event at all.
- The funeral Mass and burial. Usually late morning. Flowers already at the
church are moved with the coffin; anything arriving mid-Mass is a nuisance to
someone.
- The weeks after. Nothing formal happens, and that is the point of this
page.
If you are reading the notice and cannot work out the timing, the funeral
director named on it will tell you plainly where to send and by when. They are
asked this several times a day and nobody minds the call.
Where to send
To the funeral home, addressed to the deceased by name with the family
surname underneath, is the default and the safest choice. The staff take the
flowers in, group them, and move them to the church.
To the church works when the reposing is short or already over, but ring the
sacristy or the funeral director first. Some parishes want everything left at
the funeral home and moved as one.
To the family home is the choice most people get wrong by treating it as a
fallback. A house in the middle of a wake is already full: neighbours arriving
with food, chairs borrowed from next door, someone answering a door that has not
closed in six hours. Another arrangement is one more thing to find a surface for.
Sent a fortnight later, the same flowers arrive into a quiet house and mean
considerably more.
That is the one piece of advice a florist's own website will not give you,
because it means not ordering today.
When the notice says family flowers only
It means what it says. The family does not want arrangements from outside the
immediate circle, usually because the church would be overwhelmed or because
they would rather the money went somewhere useful. The notice almost always
names a charity, often a hospice, a hospital ward or a research fund tied to how
the person died.
Send the donation. Send a card. Do not send flowers anyway on the grounds that
yours are small.
Close family are the exception the phrase is written around. Sons, daughters,
siblings and grandchildren usually still send a wreath or a spray, and the
family knows which of those are coming.
The Mass card, which is not a lesser option
A Mass card is a normal, complete response in Ireland, not a substitute for
something better. It is signed at a parish office or bought from a religious
order, and it records that Masses will be offered for the person who died. For a
practising Catholic family it can carry more weight than any arrangement.
Sympathy cards work the same way for families who are not religious, and there
is a growing middle ground: a card with a line about a donation made in the
person's name. If you are not sure which the family would want, a plain card with
a few specific sentences about the person is never wrong. We have collected
usable wording, grouped by how well you knew them, on
what to write in a sympathy card.
If the funeral is tomorrow
Two things decide whether flowers arrive in time, and neither is what you pay.
The first is the cutoff. Irish services close same-day orders somewhere between
late morning and mid-afternoon depending on the county, and outside the Dublin
commuter belt the cutoff is usually earlier than people assume. Order before
lunch if you can.
The second is who actually makes the arrangement. A relay network passes the
order to a florist in the town itself, which is why it reaches a funeral home in
Ballina or Bantry the same day when a Dublin-based online florist would need a
courier and a night. Funeral tributes are also made to order, so a florist
needs the hours. Sending a wreath, a spray or a sheaf is not the same request as
sending a bouquet, and the shapes and rough prices are set out on
funeral flower arrangements.
If the cutoff has passed, do not order something that will arrive the day after
the burial to a closed funeral home. Ring, text, or send a card that day, and
send flowers to the house the following week.
What people spend
A hand-tied bunch or a small vase arrangement sent by a friend, a neighbour or a
colleague runs about 45 to 75 euro delivered from an Irish florist. That is the
band most sympathy orders sit in, and nobody at a funeral is assessing it.
Standing tributes are a different category. A wreath or a coffin spray starts
around 80 euro and climbs with size, and those are usually chosen by the family
rather than sent to them. A workplace collection typically lands between the two.
Lilies remain the flower most associated with Irish funerals. They arrive closed
and open over three or four days, which suits a reposing that has not happened
yet, and their pollen stains anything it touches. There is more on that, and on
what else people send, in our page on lilies.
Sending from outside Ireland
A large share of Irish sympathy orders are placed from London, Boston, Sydney
and Toronto by someone who cannot get home in time, and there are three things
worth knowing.
The timing is against you twice over. An Irish funeral can be over in
forty-eight hours, and a time difference eats one of your two ordering days. If
you are in Australia or on the American west coast, the Irish same-day cutoff has
usually passed by the time you wake up to the news. Order the night before, in
your own evening, for the following Irish morning.
A relay network is the right tool from abroad. The order goes to a florist in the
town, who knows where the funeral home is and what the local convention looks
like, and there is no courier leg to fail. Direct2Florist lets you choose the
florist by name and ring them; Interflora covers most of the country through
member shops. Both are set up for exactly this order.
Ask someone at home to check the notice for you if you are not sure you are
reading it right. Regional wording varies, and "house private" or "funeral
strictly private" means what it says regardless of how far away you are.
If nothing can arrive in time, say so on the phone rather than sending late
flowers. Then send something to the house when you are next home, or in the
month after. Distance is understood in Ireland better than almost anywhere. Being
absent is not the same as not caring, and nobody at that funeral will think it is.
Getting the address right
Two details cause most of the trouble. Put the deceased person's full name on
the card message, with the family surname, because a funeral home may be holding
three families at once. And check whether the reposing is at the funeral home or
at the family address, since Irish death notices list both and a delivery driver
reads whichever line is typed into the order.
If in doubt, the funeral director. Always the funeral director.
