What is an Urn?

Vase, urn, container, box, pot – in classical terms, an urn is an attractive, decorative container made out of wood, pottery or metal. It is meant  to hold the ashes of the deceased. You don’t even have to go into a funeral home to order one because their websites allow you to make your choice from the comfort of your home. The memorial products will then be shipped to your door. You’ll find that you get many traditional standard-sized funeral urns for ashes, but there are also those smaller keepsake urns as well.

There are Urns for Pets Too

Funeral homes also understand the love lavished on a pet, and they provide a selection of containers and keepsakes to remember your pet. You can either opt to take home their ashes in a special customised box that will be with you always or you might want a keepsake that will be a constant reminder for you of your beloved pet.

So where do you start knowing which urn to buy. Are you intending to bury the ashes in the ground, scatter them across the earth, throw them out to sea or keep the ashes at home as an ornament.

Those who decide to scatter the ashes, more often than not choose biodegradable materials for the urn while some make sure that the temporary urn for ashes is a useful container afterwards, such as becoming a useful, lovely, ‘living memorial’ birdhouse.

What Size Urn is Required?

In terms of size, the volume of ashes for a typical adult will be about 5 pounds but it can be as much as 10 pounds, depending on the bones of the deceased, their organ tissue, fat, and fluids. With cremation, a corpse is usually burned at 1,700° for about 3 hours, after which the remaining bone fragments are ground up into a powdery consistency.

There may be bits of bone that weren’t ground down completely. Also, because bodies are mostly cremated within a container, these remains are sometimes also included in the ashes, so that the final weight of the cremated remains is debatable.

Each Urn has a Unique Purpose

The funeral industry offers different urn types and each has a specific purpose.

●   The companion urn are the largest available from the memorial industry, and range in size from 300 – 600 cubic inches and they hold the ashes of 2 people who want to be memorialized together. Sometimes these companion urns are divided into 2 compartments.

●   Keepsake urns are the smallest, and a common use for them is to hold just a small portion of cremation remains. These keepsake urns are mostly used by families who want to share a loved one’s remains.

There is no rush to buy an urn, and it isn’t mandatory either because the ashes are in any case collected from the crematorium in a temporary container or transparent plastic bag. However you will want to get an urn for the ashes when you place them in a columbarium.

A Personalised Urn of Remembrance

There is no better way to remember a loved than with a beautiful customised cremation urn. It allows the family to keep their loved one near them or to scatter their ashes from a beautiful vessel and watch how they disappear into the wind.

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All info was correct at time of publishing