Talk about putting the fun back in funeral!
This week, nearly 4,000 people crowded into the Amsterdam’s historic central Westerkerk Church for a one day funeral industry conference that showed off the hottest new trends set to hit your friend’s and family’s deaths in the upcoming year.
While there are dozens of exhibitors, there were a few that really stood out from the crowd.
– 3D printed Urns
The world of 3D printing has gotten pretty precise. You can now take a scan of your loved one’s head and have it 3D printed into an urn that you can fill with their ashes.
– Walking Stick Ash disposal
For people who want to spread their loved one’s ashes at their leisure, they can get them placed into a walking stick urn. Just walk around and click the button every time you want a little bit of the ashes to be released. As an added bonus, the walking stick will save the GPS coordinates of every drop off, so you can create a commemorative map of all they places they ended up.
– “Funeral LEGOS”
Sadly, these aren’t being made by the actual LEGO company, but there is a group that makes a set of building blocks for kids that allows them to build their own hearse, coffin, a mini graveyard, and crematorium (complete with imitation flames at the back). The hope is that kids will be able to use the toys to help better understand where their family member has disappeared to and then they’ll be able to better work through their own feelings.
– Garden Graves
Burying a hippy? Now you can plan veggies on their plot. Sadly, the plants are in a special compartment that keeps them separate from all the nutrients that the dearly departed is adding to the soil.
– Shuffleboard Coffin
The problem with dead people is that they are SOOOO BORING! Now there’s a new coffin that comes with a mini shuffleboard built into the cover so mourners can kill time before the burial.
– The “Ikea” Coffin
DIY is the next big thing in death. Those fancy coffins that come already put together can cost an arm and a leg, but thankfully a new company is selling a mail-order model that the family can gather around ant put together as a group. What a perfect way to remember the crafter in your family that just died.