Funerals & celebrations of life · Gold Coast · QLD
Funeral celebrant, Gold Coast
A funeral or celebration of life on the Gold Coast with Felicity Best is $750, including the family meeting, the eulogy, liaison with your funeral director and the PA, with the travel included. There is no weekend loading and no short notice fee, and Felicity can usually take a service within a few days.
What it costs on the Gold Coast
| What you get | Mon–Thu | Fri–Sun |
|---|---|---|
| Funeral or celebration of life A personal meeting with family or loved ones; a personalised eulogy and complete ceremony; help with readings, music, tributes and other personal touches; helping family and friends prepare if they would like to speak; liaison with your funeral director; conducting and guiding the complete ceremony; chapel, graveside or another agreed location; PA and wireless microphone; the final committal. | $750 | same |
| Graveside or ashes committal A simple, personal committal of around 30 minutes, written and led by me. It can be held on its own or as a separate farewell following a funeral or cremation. | $450 | same |
| Living funeral A celebration held while someone is still here, planned with the person being celebrated: a chance to gather the people they love, share stories, memories and music, and say the things people so often leave unsaid. | $750 | same |
Australian dollars, no GST. Travel within 80 km or an hour and a half of Murwillumbah is included, whichever gets you there; beyond both it is $1 per kilometre, round trip. Booking fee $250, which comes off the total. Council permits for beach and park ceremonies are booked and paid for directly with the council, and are not included.
The Gold Coast is about 40 minutes from Murwillumbah. Travel within 80 km or an hour and a half of Murwillumbah is included; beyond that it is $1 per kilometre round trip. There is no notice period, and no weekend loading.
Venues
Where on the Gold Coast
- Currumbin
- Palm Beach
- Burleigh Heads
- Tugun
- Elanora
Chapel times, and why services run to the clock
Most Gold Coast services are held in a crematorium or memorial park chapel, and those chapels run back to back. The booking is normally an hour, of which about forty-five minutes is the service and the rest is arriving and leaving. That is not a rushed hour if the running order was built for it, and it is a very difficult one if six people were each going to speak for ten minutes.
I fix that at the family meeting rather than on the day: a written order with names and times against them, one main eulogy that I carry, and speakers who know they have four minutes. Where a family wants an open floor, the wake or a later gathering is a better place for it than a chapel with another service waiting outside.
When the family is spread out
Gold Coast families are frequently half somewhere else. Where people cannot travel in time your funeral director can record or stream the service, and most of the larger chapels are set up for it. It is worth me writing the ceremony knowing that some of the audience is watching a screen at an awkward hour.
The other pattern is two events: a small committal within the week for whoever is here, and a celebration of life weeks or months later when everyone can come. A committal on its own is $450, and I do not charge a penalty for arranging the second gathering later. It is a common shape rather than an unusual one.
Questions
Questions people ask
- How much does a funeral celebrant cost on the Gold Coast?
- $750 for a full service and $450 for a committal, both including the family meeting, the eulogy, the liaison with your funeral director and the PA, with the travel from Murwillumbah included. There is no weekend loading and no short notice fee.
- Do you take services at short notice?
- Yes. There is no notice period for a funeral, no weekend loading and no short notice fee. Most families ring once their funeral director has a chapel time, which is often two or three days out, and that is a normal amount of warning rather than an emergency.
Get in touch
Send a message
For after hours, or if a call is hard right now. Say who the service is for, roughly when it might be, and how to reach you, and I will call you back.
Most days, 9am to 7pm.