Watching Mythbusters. There's some commercial on trying to sell life insurance where the guy's adding up the total for a funeral. Of course it's an outrageous amount. The thing is, almost everything but the actual burial is optional. There's no reason to buy the most expensive vault or coffin. What are you going to do? Dig it up and look at it now and then? And the limousine. Who the heck cares? Drive your own car. There's no need for a limo unless you just want to play Mafia Funeral. When my parents died, they tried to sell us all this stuff and I said the same thing. My mother was cremated so that took care of pretty much everything. Just dig a hole in her family plot and drop the container in. She didn't want a 'viewing' or tons of flowers or even a ceremony. She said she didn't want people looking at her that she couldn't look back at. She also said there was no need for flowers. She'd be dead and couldn't appreciate them. Give her flowers while she's alive to enjoy them. And she said a ceremony was useless. SHe was already dead--nothing the preacher said would change anything. Daddy did have a funeral, but not an elaborate one. He got a decent coffin and a vault up to code. Otherwise, I didn't go in for all that elaborate stuff. If people couldn't visit him and see about him while he was alive, I wasn't going to let them assuage their guilt by letting them put on a big show after he was dead.
But that's just me.