Which funeral homes and chapels do you deliver to around Eau Claire?
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All of them within the radius. In the city and Altoona, the names that come up most on these orders are Stokes, Prock & Mundt Funeral Chapel and the Cremation Society of Wisconsin. Because this market runs on a widened 60-mile search radius, the chapels and church halls in the smaller communities come into range too — Chippewa Falls, Lake Hallie, Fall Creek, Augusta, Osseo, Strum, Eleva, Mondovi, Durand, Menomonie, Colfax, Elk Mound, Bloomer, Cadott, Cornell, Stanley and Black River Falls. Always give us the chapel or church name with the town, because rural addresses in these townships are easy to mistake.
When should the flowers actually arrive?
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The afternoon before the service, or the morning of it. Visitation around here is usually held for an hour or two immediately before the service in the same building, often with an additional evening visitation the day before, and that visitation is when the family is standing in the room receiving people — which is when an arrangement does its work. Something that arrives while the service is underway is too late to be seen by anyone it was meant for. Tell us which part you are sending to, because a visitation table, a graveside, a luncheon and the family's house are four different deliveries.
Should I send flowers to the funeral or to the family's house?
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Often the house, and in this valley that is not a second-best choice. Relatives drive in from the Twin Cities, Madison and further, the house fills up for several days, and an arrangement on the kitchen table gets seen by everyone who comes through. A green plant or blooming basket sent to the house is the version families here tend to keep — the visitation flowers are gone by Monday, and the plant is still on the windowsill months later. If you are sending to the house, give us a mobile number for whoever is coordinating, because nobody is answering the landline that week.
What about a burial in the middle of winter?
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Expect the service and the burial to be separated. When the ground freezes, which in this part of Wisconsin routinely means December into March and sometimes a late cold spring, many area cemeteries hold interment until the thaw — so a February funeral is often followed by a committal in May. Flowers for the February service are entirely right. Flowers addressed to the cemetery that month are not, and our shops say so rather than sell you one. When the graveside finally happens, Forest Hill Cemetery in the city and the township churchyards along the county-letter roads are the common destinations.
The obituary says memorials instead of flowers. What should I do?
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Honor it. Around here that line is meant literally, and families notice who read it. Send a card with your note and make the donation to whatever the obituary named — a church fund, a hospice, a fire department, a scholarship at the school. If you want something physical in the house anyway, ask the family first, or send a single plant to the home a week or two after the service, once the crowd has gone and the week nobody talks about has started. Neither of our Eau Claire shops will push an arrangement on you when memorials have been requested.
I'm out of state and I don't know the funeral home. Can you still handle it?
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Yes, and this is a large share of Eau Claire sympathy volume, because people leave this valley for work and come back for funerals. Give us whatever you have — the deceased's name, the town, the day, or the text of the obituary itself as printed in the Leader-Telegram. The shop will confirm the venue and the hour before it builds anything. Hand-written card with your own wording is included, and we will copy what you send rather than editing it. If the service turns out to be beyond the radius or already past, you will be told, not charged.