Working With Nicklas D Jensen Funeral Home Obituaries
I've spent more years than I care to count helping families navigate the obituary process at Nicklas D Jensen Funeral Home and similar operations across the region. The work is straightforward in theory but full of small landmines that trip people up. Most of them come down to missing deadlines or unclear documentation. Here is what actually happens when you try to file an obituary through a traditional funeral home office. The core workflow starts with gathering the standard documentation package: a certified death certificate, the deceased's full legal name as it appeared on official records, Social Security number, date and place of birth, date and place of death, and a recent photograph suitable for print. Most funeral homes have a intake form for this, but they vary in what they require upfront. Nicklas D Jensen typically asks for the bulk of it before the obituary goes to press. You submit the materials, they draft the notice, you review one round of edits, and it gets published in the designated newspaper or on their website within two to three business days. The tricky part is not the submission itself. It is the verification step. I learned this the hard way during a case in 2019 when a family submitted an obituary using a nickname for the deceased that differed from the death certificate by one letter. The newspaper rejected it on the second pass because the name didn't match the legal documentation. They had already charged the family for the initial layout. We spent six hours on the phone between the funeral director, the newspaper editor, and the county clerk's office just to get a handwritten correction notarized. The workaround was simple in hindsight: always confirm the exact legal spelling with the family before the draft goes out, and run it against the death certificate yourself before submission. That one habit saved me dozens of similar headaches after that.
Another thing people miss is the timeline for payment. Obituaries at Nicklas D Jensen and most affiliated newspapers charge by the line or by the column inch, and the cost scales quickly if you include extended survivor lists or multiple photographs. A standard obituary with one photo and a basic biographical paragraph usually runs between $200 and $450 depending on the publication. Adding a full-page layout or a two-photo spread pushes it into the $800 to $1,200 range. Families often do not realize this until the proof arrives, and then they are stuck deciding what to cut. I recommend getting a cost estimate in writing before you approve the draft. Ask for the per-line rate and the minimum word count threshold. It takes thirty seconds and prevents surprise bills. There is also the question of digital versus print placement. Funeral homes now routinely offer a digital obituary page on their own website alongside the traditional newspaper print version. The digital version can include guestbooks, photo galleries, and live streaming links for services. The print version is what most older relatives and community members actually see. If the family wants both, expect to pay the print fee plus a smaller digital maintenance fee, usually between $50 and $150 for a standard thirty-day hosting period. Some funeral homes bundle this, some do not. Always ask before you commit. The biggest bottleneck I consistently see is the photograph selection process. Families tend to agonize over which image to use, which is understandable but also costly in terms of time. Death happens on a Thursday. The newspaper deadline for Saturday publication is often Monday evening. That leaves roughly seventy-two hours to select a photo, submit it in the correct format, and finalize the text. Most newspapers require a high-resolution JPEG at least 300 DPI and no smaller than 1500 pixels on the longest side. Phone camera photos usually don't meet this requirement unless they were taken with a good lens and proper lighting. I tell families to pick the first decent photo they find in a album rather than spending hours searching for perfection. A serviceable image submitted on time will always look better than a perfect image submitted too late.
Language barriers add another layer of complication. I once worked a case where the deceased was a Danish immigrant and the family wanted the obituary written in Danish. Nicklas D Jensen could arrange a translation, but the newspaper they were submitting to did not accept non-English copy without an English summary. The family ended up running a bilingual notice, which cost significantly more and required coordinating two separate editorial reviews. If you are dealing with a non-English obituary, confirm with the funeral home and the publication ahead of time whether bilingual placement is supported and what the additional fees look like. It varies by market and is not something they advertise prominently. One counter-intuitive detail about these obituaries is that the funeral home does not always control the final published text. The newspaper or online publisher has the right to edit for space, style, or policy compliance. I have seen funeral directors push back on unnecessary edits, but the publication's legal team holds the final say. The best approach is to write the obituary with the understanding that minor adjustments may occur, and to flag any non-negotiable content upfront. Things like the exact military service dates or a specific religious invocation are worth noting clearly so the editor knows not to trim them. If you are arranging an obituary and need to start, the fastest path is to call the funeral home directly and ask for their obituary submission packet. Most offices, including Nicklas D Jensen, will email it within the hour. Fill it out completely before sending it back. Incomplete forms get returned, which burns precious time. You can usually expect the full cycle from submission to first proof within forty-eight hours during normal business days. During holidays or weekend deaths, add an extra day to that estimate.
Get the Full Details
