Coffin Club is something different! We work together to provide funeral celebrant training and end of life planning empowerment.
Kate Tym (Blonde Kate) and Kate Dyer (Red-head Kate). We first met when we worked as Registrars for our local council. We jumped ship to become wedding celebrants and, after a short time, decided to train to conduct funerals – and so Kate and Kate Celebrants was born.
It didn’t take much time for us to become aware of how formulaic funerals tend to be and were so frustrated with the lack of choice and creativity being offered. Not only that, but we were amazed how little people knew about what was available to them for their final fling and how there seemed to be a reluctance from many in the funeral industry to make this information readily available.
Not ones to see a problem and not set about fixing it, our mission became to communicate and educate and bring the tricky topic of funerals out in the open. We started with a Coffin Club in our own area of Hastings on England’s south coast, before teaching other people to set up Coffin Clubs in their communities.
We started training other celebrants as we really see funeral celebrants as being key players in helping to change the face of funerals. We worked with other death professionals and, most importantly, brought our message to the general public by creating a uniquely informative plan-your-own funeral course.
We’d found our calling! People loved our approach and we’re really thrilled and grateful to have had our passion recognised with a trophy cabinet full of awards. We’re absolutely convinced that bringing death back to life is vital for better outcomes around grief recovery and resilience and, we couldn’t agree more with our inimitable patron, Miriam Margolyes, when she says, ‘Everyone who is going to die should come to Coffin Club.
Viva la Coffin Club revolution!!
Here’s some of the most frequently asked questions we get asked. If you’ve got any other questions, please do drop us a line, as we’d love to hear from you.
To find out if there’s a Coffin Club in your area have a look at our directory of clubs. If there isn’t a club near you and you would still like to plan your own funeral you could do that with our fabulous downloadable funeral-planning course. All the content of a Coffin Club course, but in a downloadable form. To find out more click HERE. Or, take the initiative and set up a Coffin Club in your area
Yes, we do! We are the ONLY organisation that encourages celebrants to work outside of the funeral-director-as gatekeeper model, market directly to their communities, serve the families they work with in a broader way and regain complete control over their careers. If you’re new to celebrancy and need training from scratch click HERE.
If you already work as a funeral celebrant but want to kick the funeral-director-as-gatekeeper model into touch, and work in a broader, more creative, way click HERE. We really believe that celebrants are key to changing the face of funerals – we love you guys!
Look no further than our Celebrant Directory. We only list celebrants who have undertaken our Celebrant-plus training and who work in a completely person-centred way. From a smaller, more traditional service to all bells-and-whistles, thinking outside the box (pun intended) our celebrants really can support you every step of the way
The Kates are only too happy to come and talk about Coffin Club and how to change the face of funerals forever. Please get in touch by filling in a speaker’s request form.
We work in partnership with Coffin in a Box, a brilliantly innovative Dutch company. To buy a Coffin from them, pop over to their website at www.Coffininabox.com
The Celebrant-plus course is a downloadable course that you work through in your own time; so it’s available for you to start any time you like. You get six modules of fabulous video content and an accompanying workbook and can work through it at your own pace.
Yes, we have a fabulous downloadable plan your own funeral course which has loads of brilliant fun and fantastically informative videos, an accompanying handbook and a funeral wish list that you work through to create your perfect send off.
This course covers every aspect of your end-of-life journey from registering your death, to what you’d like to happen to your body, to just how you’d like your final farewell to be.
So, don’t leave it ‘til you’re dead – plan ahead. Get your farewell event jotted down, give the information to whoever you’re leaving in charge and then get back on with living.
Thanks for running the celebrant plus course over the past couple of days. Although I knew this stuff was possible, you have given me the confidence to go forward and implement all the knowledge I now have. To step forward knowing that what l’m advocating for is a better choice for families at what is a bloody hard time in their lives. Offering real choice to people to have the sort of funerals they want – to take back control to put them back in the driving seat is so empowering- at a time when the world feels like it spinning out of control! Looking forward to facilitating and helping families create the funerals they want!
I’m so excited to be a Coffin Club Celebrant Plus Celebrant. I deliberated for ages over doing the course, but I’m so glad I finally did it! I was already a trained Celebrant but I now have a much deeper understanding of how we can improve the traditional funeral model, giving families the best and widest choices for their loved one’s final farewell. Feeling there was more to offer families than the twenty minutes at the Crematorium, I’m now confident there is a better way for those who want it.
My ambition is to work directly with families who want to take ownership of their funeral arrangements, recommending the very best funeral directors who want to take part in a progressive movement for change.
I had already attended several webinars led by the bundles of energy that are ‘the two Kates’. I was convinced by their passion, knowledge and drive to create a revolution in the world of funerals, and I’m excited to be a part of that movement for change. Viva la funeral revolucion!
