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Making a funeral presentation yourself: how to go about it

4 July 2026 · Last updated on 15 July 2026

Making a funeral presentation needn't mean a late night wrestling with PowerPoint. With good preparation (and by using our tool) you can have something dignified ready within an hour or two.

Step 1: start with the running order, not the slides

First write out the order of the service: arrival, words of welcome, speakers, musical moments, perhaps a video, the final farewell. This running order shapes the presentation: every step in the service becomes a block.

You settle this together with the funeral director and the family, and it naturally determines the shape of the funeral presentation.

Step 2: gather the material block by block

• For the arrival: a calm photo (often the memorial portrait) and soft music.
• For each speaker: a photo that stays on screen while they speak. Often the memorial portrait is simply shown here, but it can also be a photo chosen by the speaker that ties in with their story.
• For the musical moments: the piece of music plus a series of photos (see our tips on choosing photos).
• For the final farewell: music that can be repeated until everyone has filed past, or a last piece played as the coffin is carried out.

Step 3: the technical side that makes the difference

These are the things that set a funeral presentation apart from an ordinary slideshow, and that are hard to build yourself in PowerPoint:

1. Music that carries on across several slides. The piece starts on the first photo and plays on as the photos change.
2. Timing calculated to the music. The photos divide up the length of the piece, so the last photo ends as the music ends.
3. Waiting for the operator where it matters. For a speaker, the slide stays put until someone clicks; after all, you never know how long someone will speak.
4. Music on repeat at the final farewell. The piece plays on, however long the moment lasts.

The timing per photo during a piece of music is the tricky part in particular. Photos are often added or changed, and with every change the timing has to be checked again, since getting it right really matters. That is a time-consuming task, and quite a heavy one for the family. Our tool does this entirely automatically: you fill in the photos and music per block and are assured of correctly set timing per slide in a properly working PowerPoint.

Step 4: check in real PowerPoint

Play the presentation beforehand in PowerPoint itself, not in other programs. View it with the family and decide whether any changes are still needed. Before the presentation is sent to the venue, it is always important to have run through it carefully yourself once, to confirm that everything matches the running order.

Step 5: arrange the day itself

In nine cases out of ten this is all handled by the funeral venue or the crematorium. But should that not be the case, provide a laptop with PowerPoint, a backup on a USB stick and someone to operate the cues. Print the instruction document with the click actions for the operator; with our tool you get that PDF automatically with the final version.

Prefer to get started right away? Make a free trial version: building and viewing it costs nothing.