Kapiti Coast Funeral Home

02/12/2025

27/11/2025

These are some of the caskets in our display room, amazing variety, but I want to show you something new that I've been working on. This is the casket I've been working on. We've had this range for a while, all our caskets are pine, these ones with the rope handles are at the cheaper end of the range, but I wanted something at the cheaper end of the range that also looked really cool.
So we put this black line on the bottom and the top and a black handle and it just offsets the whole casket. It's still very dignified, but obviously we can do this at a much cheaper price. So just something a little bit different, plastic, a bit of black paint, it looks awesome.
And you can still write on it, you can still decorate it as you need to, but it keeps it at that lower price point, which is really important these days.

26/11/2025

Symbolic rituals in funeral services – creating meaning in farewell
When Thomas collapsed with a sudden heart attack at 58, his wife Helen felt completely lost. "I kept expecting him to walk through the door," she told me. "My head knew he was gone, but my heart hadn't caught up." It wasn't until the funeral service that she realised he really was no longer there. "Seeing the coffin, knowing he was unreachable—that's when I understood he wasn't coming home."

read more
https://funeraldirectors.co.nz/news-and-events/news-and-advocacy/symbolic-rituals-in-funeral-services-creating-meaning-in-farewell/

25/11/2025

Ways to watch a Live Streamed Service after it is over.

Also remember this is always free to watch, so if someone tries to sell you this service it is not from us

20/11/2025

What about photo tributes? How have they changed?
Yeah, so photo tributes have changed a lot. So in the funeral we often have a photo tribute or a slideshow that people watch, and we put that to music. Sometimes we'll have two in a funeral and often now we're getting video clips, etc.

as well. The thing about that is often families don't have all the photos. You might have some on your phone.

Someone else might have a whole lot of old ones that we've got to scan. Uncle Bill might have a couple and so we end up correlating them all together. So, another cool piece of technology that we have on our, not our website, but on our software that we use, FTPro, is we have a portal.

So, we can send our portal link to a family and then they can actually upload those straight into the portal and then we can actually put them into our system from there. And it means that you can give lots of people, different people access in the family and they can all send their photos in that way. And then of course we put it into a slideshow, time it to music, etc.

And then we use that to actually not just play at the funeral but give it to the family as a keepsake. And one of the extra things we also then do is go back to old school and we print all those photos off again and put them in a book.

13/11/2025

What you do at your funeral or one you're organising is absolutely a free choice and a themed or personalised funeral can be very meaningful and memorable.

One example of this is a recent Red Hat Funeral held in our chapel

13/11/2025

Join us for a special Christmas Remembrance Service,
remember the ‘Gap’ left by absent loved ones.
Family and support people welcome.
No RSVP required.
Place your personal message on the tree.
You're welcome to stay after for refreshments.

05/11/2025

𝐀 𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐨𝐬𝐚𝐮𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐰𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚𝐧 𝟖 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐨𝐥𝐝
Kāpiti Coast Funeral Home recently helped create a truly special farewell for eight-year-old Ryder. His dinosaur-themed funeral featured a Jurassic Park soundtrack, a dinosaur-covered casket, and even a heartfelt haka performed by a man in a T-Rex costume.

Funerals like Ryder’s give families the space to grieve, celebrate the life of their loved one, and find comfort in meaningful rituals. Every detail — from the theme to the ceremony — can help families feel supported and understood during one of life’s most difficult moments.

Grieving is never easy, but a personalised farewell can make the journey a little gentler.

05/11/2025

Simple, sustainable, and personal cardboard caskets, made in New Zealand by Outside The Box Caskets. Designed for families who want a more personal and natural way to say goodbye.

04/11/2025

Question: What about offsite streaming?

Answer: Yeah, so offsite at our crematorium, we have a separate system. And we also have a portable system that we use offsite.

We haven't got all the gear, so what we tend to do is if you want a good quality one offsite, we then employ someone who comes in with all their cameras and can do again, a little bit like we do in our chapel, can do a multi-camera angles. And we're not then worrying about that technology. We've got enough to do at the time of the funeral.

So great having those professionals. They are expensive, but they have got the gear. We build that into our chapel fee, so it's all part of our service at the funeral home chapel.