Writing Obituaries That Actually Fit
The Bonnerup Funeral Home obituary section is one of those local resources people discover too late. I learned this the hard way in 2019 when my grandmother passed and I sat down to draft something that felt right. What I found was a confusing mix of formats, word limits, and submission rules that nobody actually published in one place. So I started keeping notes. This is what I wish existed when I needed it. A real walkthrough of how their obituary process works, what they accept, and the edge cases that catch people off guard. Most funeral homes have quirks. Bonnerup's are specific enough that getting them wrong means resubmission delays, and you don't want that kind of friction during an already rough few days. The basic process is straightforward. You submit the obituary through their online portal or by phone, they review it for tone and factual accuracy, then it goes live within 24 to 48 hours depending on the publication day. The trick is in the details most guides skip over.
I once tried to include a full poem in the body because the family wanted it as a closing tribute. The system rejected it at the formatting stage — no paragraph breaks allowed in the free-text field. I ended up having to paste it as a single block of text with slashes between lines. It looked terrible on first review. After resubmitting with line breaks properly formatted, it went through. Lesson learned: check the accepted character count before you write. The limit is 2,500 characters including spaces, and anything over gets cut off or bounced back entirely. Another thing nobody mentions is the survivor list convention. Bonnerup follows a strict order — spouse first, then children alphabetically, then grandchildren grouped by parent, then siblings, then parents if applicable. Deviating from this without a note causes delays because the editor has to ask for clarification. I learned this when my uncle's obituary got held up for six hours because we listed his sister before her husband and she was actually deceased. A simple parenthetical "(deceased)" next to her name would have saved the back-and-forth.
The Online Portal vs. Phone Submission
There are two ways to get your obituary into the system. The online form at bonnerup.com/obituaries is faster but more restrictive. The phone option lets you talk through special requests, which matters if you're dealing with a non-standard family situation — blended families, estranged relationships, or pets you want included. The online form auto-saves every 30 seconds, which is helpful. I've drafted long obituaries only to have my browser crash, and the auto-save recovered everything within two clicks. The phone line doesn't offer that safety net. If you call in and the line drops mid-draft, you start over. I recommend drafting in a plain text editor first, then pasting it in. Don't compose directly in the form unless it's short. One counter-intuitive thing about the online portal: the preview function doesn't render line breaks correctly until after final submission. What looks fine on your screen comes out compressed on the live page. Always wait for the confirmation email with the live link before assuming the formatting is right. That caught me twice.
Get the Full Details
Tone and Content Guidelines
Bonnerup is conservative but not rigid. They'll accept humor, religious references, secular tributes, and even occasional profanity if it's meaningful to the person being remembered. The hard rule is factual accuracy — dates, names, and locations must check out. They verify against public records, which is why misspelled names or wrong dates hold up the entire process. I've seen people try to rush through and get the maiden name wrong, or list a city that no longer exists under that name. Both trigger verification holds. Take an extra day to double-check spelling against a birth certificate or old letter. It saves hours of waiting. Here's something most people don't realize: you can update an obituary after it's published. If there's a correction, a photo addition, or a service time change, call the office within 72 hours of going live and they'll push the edit through the same day. After that window, changes go into a review queue that can take three business days. Don't wait until after the funeral to fix a wrong phone number for the memorial donation request.
Photos and Media
The portal allows one photo per obituary, uploaded as JPG or PNG under 5 MB. Common mistake: people upload a 4K raw photo from their phone and the system rejects it. Resize it first. Even if the upload goes through, the thumbnail display is 300 by 400 pixels, so anything smaller than that ends up pixelated. I usually recommend cropping to a 3-by-4 ratio at 600 DPI minimum before uploading. They don't support collages or slideshows. If the family wants multiple photos, you include a sentence like "Additional photos are available on request" and direct people to the funeral home's social media page, where they sometimes post additional images separately.
Pricing and Extras
The base obituary listing is included in most of Bonnerup's standard packages at no extra charge. If you're using their most basic cremation-only option, it runs about $89 for a standard-length obituary. Going over the 2,500-character limit adds $15 per 500 characters. A printed newspaper version through their partner publications runs another $120 to $200 depending on the paper's circulation size. Some people skip the newspaper version entirely. The online obituary gets roughly ten times the views of the print version for local obituaries, based on what I've seen tracking visits over the years. If budget is tight, prioritize the online posting and skip the print unless the family specifically wants it for older relatives who don't go online.
Common Pitfalls
Two issues come up constantly. The first is the church or venue address. If you only say "First Baptist Church" without the street address, people show up to the wrong location. Include the full address or at least the cross streets. Bonnerup's editors will flag incomplete addresses during review, but if you're on a tight deadline you might not see the flag until after it's already submitted. The second is the donation request wording. Phrases like "in lieu of flowers, donations may be made" are fine, but if you list a charity that no longer accepts donations or has a closed website, it creates problems. I've seen this happen with small regional charities that merged or dissolved. Always verify the donation link works before submitting. A dead link in a live obituary is noticeable and unpleasant for readers trying to honor the deceased. The other thing to watch for is the memorial message threshold. Bonnerup enables reader comments on obituaries, but only after the funeral service has passed. This prevents grief-stricken messages from overwhelming the page during the immediate aftermath. If you want to disable comments entirely, mark that in the submission form. Some families prefer that, especially for public figures whose obituaries attract attention beyond the local community.
Timeline Expectations
Standard turnaround is 24 to 48 hours for online publication. Submissions made before 3 PM on a weekday go live the same business day. Afternoon and weekend submissions queue for the next business day. Rush processing is available for an additional $50 and guarantees same-day publication if submitted before noon, but it requires verification of death by the funeral director on file — you can't self-submit a rush request without the case being active at the home. Most people don't need rush. The standard timeline is fast enough, and the extra cost rarely justifies it unless there's a time-sensitive element like a service announcement that needs to reach people immediately. I've been on calls where families insisted on rush processing and then didn't use the window because their paperwork wasn't ready. The $50 vanished with no benefit.
What to Do When Things Go Wrong
If your obituary gets flagged for edits, call the office directly rather than emailing. Email responses take six to eight hours on average. Phone hold times during peak hours — Monday mornings and the days following a holiday — can stretch to 20 minutes. Tuesday through Thursday afternoon is the quietest window, and that's when I recommend making any corrections or updates. The one scenario where the whole system breaks down is when the deceased has no registered case file at Bonnerup. You cannot submit an obituary through their portal without an active funeral service arrangement. In those cases, they direct you to their affiliate publications page, which links to independent obituary services. It's slower and less personalized, but it's the only path if the family chose a different funeral home or handled arrangements privately. I keep a running checklist now for every obituary I help write, born from those early mistakes. Name spelling, birth and death dates, survivor list order, full service address, charity verification, photo dimensions, and character count. It takes about ten minutes to run through before submission, and it eliminates the vast majority of the problems I used to encounter. Worth the habit.
