Practicing your funeral speech

Now you should have finalized preparing your eulogy, it is advisable to practice it. You can do this various times. I advocate you do this in numerous phases:

1. Practice alone- the first thing you can do is start reading your address aloud to for yourself more than once, until you it.

2. Spend time practicing by yourself in the mirror or videotape your practice session – The next activity you should do will be to practice in the mirror or better still looking at a video camera. Keep in mind, you want to look up thereby making eye contact with the whenever you can, so you ought to practice this. It should get a lot easier as you become familiar with your funeral speech.

3. Rehearse when in front of a family member or close friend – You must do this more than once, in order to convey the eulogy without feeling too nervous or upset. Ask your ‘test audience’ to give you frank comments.

Some questions to ask might be:

• Is the tone OK? Do you find it too somber or too funny?
• Will some of the stories or jokes included be taken the wrong way?
• Was I talking too fast?
• Do I say any kind of ‘filler words’ (umm, like, and so on. which often come from your mouth subconsciously during the course of pauses)
• Did I made a good amount of eye contact?
• Is there other things you can advise me that might help make this better? Please be critical and honest.

The more you practice the more comfortable you'll be, but always bring a written copy, even if you decide to memorize it!!