Archive for the ‘Cemetery Information’ Category

After you have placed your order for a headstone or burial marker, your gravestone will be delivered to the cemetery and will need to be set. Sometimes people choose to install headstones themselves, but this is not recommended if you do not have any experience with construction. This is especially not recommended if the gravestone you have purchased is particularly large and heavy. Attempting to set a headstone when you don’t have any knowledge or background with setting monuments can cause injury to yourself or damage to an expensive marker. Contacting a local monument dealer to install a headstone is your best bet to ensuring the headstone is installed properly.

Before you make any calls, you may consider calling a few cemeteries to see if they can recommend any headstone installers. Most of the time the cemetery where the headstone is placed will install the monument for a fee, but you are not required to use this cemetery. The Federal Trade Commission allows consumers to shop around for any funeral services they need to encourage competition or free trade.

Be aware that some monument companies may only install the headstones they have designed or created, but most will install a monument from an outside vendor given you pay them for the installation. If you are having trouble locating a monument installer, try contacting a local funeral business. Sometimes the staff can recommend a particular company that sets headstones.

You will need to make sure that you have the proper burial information from the cemetery before the monument company installs the headstone. You don’t want the company to receive the wrong information and place the headstone at an incorrect burial plot. This rarely occurs, because many times the headstone is placed within a few weeks of burial. If the headstone was purchased on a pre-need basis, then the headstone can be set prior to burial.

It’s very important that you have an experienced company set the headstone for you. If you have any concerns about the work of a monument company, ask if they have set any recent headstones in cemeteries near your home so you can see an example of their work.