Working With Ridgeway Funeral Home Paris TN Obituaries Honoring The Past Celebrating Life
Ridgeway Funeral Home in Paris, Tennessee handles obituary writing as part of their full-service funeral arrangements. If you're dealing with them right now, you probably need to get the notice right so it runs properly in the local papers and on their website. Here is how the process actually works from the inside. The obituary at Ridgeway typically starts with a intake form they give you at the facility or send over email after the initial arrangement conference. You fill in the basics: full legal name, date of birth, date of death, surviving family members, and predeceased relatives. Then there is the biographical section where you decide what to include about their life, career, military service, church involvement, hobbies, and the like. They usually ask if you want a specific religious tone or secular approach written in. Their staff then drafts the piece and sends it back to you for review before it goes to any publication. This review step is important because once it is printed in the Paris News or submitted to their online memorial page, changes are difficult and sometimes incur extra fees depending on the outlet.
One thing I learned the hard way: the surviving family list. If you leave someone out accidentally, people find out fast at a small funeral home in a small town. I had a situation where a half-brother was omitted because the family hadn't spoken in twenty years. The daughter filling out the form didn't even know he was still alive. We had to pull a quick phone tree, locate him, and confirm whether he wanted to be included or not. The workaround was simply calling each living child and asking directly before final submission rather than relying on the primary contact to know everyone. It takes twenty minutes and prevents a much bigger problem.
What to Expect From the Process
Ridgeway's obituary service is not free. It is bundled into their basic funeral package or offered as an add-on if you are doing a memorial-only service. The standard obituary runs about 300 to 500 words unless you pay for additional space in the newspaper. Their website memorial page is more flexible and allows you to upload photos, a timeline of life events, and links to a guestbook where people can leave messages. The timeline from draft to publication is usually two to three business days. If you need it faster, you can request expedited handling, though that depends on whether they have staffing available that day. During peak periods in late December or around holidays, turnaround can stretch to five days.
Get the Full Details
Common Pitfalls People Run Into
The biggest issue I see is vague dates. People will write "born in 1952" without an exact date, and the newspaper will reject it or return it for clarification. Same thing with city and state for birth and death locations. If the death happened out of state at a hospital, make sure you have the correct city listed, not just the state. Funeral homes sometimes default to the home city on file, which can be wrong. Another thing: people assume the obituary has to follow a strict template. It does not. Ridgeway will accommodate a nontraditional format if you ask. I have seen military obituaries that read more like a service record, and others that were written as a short biography. The key is telling the intake coordinator what you want upfront so they do not revert to the standard religious format automatically. If you want to include a donation request instead of flowers, phrase it clearly. "In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to..." is the standard format, and newspapers prefer that over "no flowers please" which some outlets will not publish at all.
Online vs Print Considerations
Printing in the Paris News gives you a permanent copy and reaches the older demographic in the area who still read the paper. Their online memorial page reaches younger family and friends who live out of town. Most families do both. The online version can be updated after publication, which is useful if you discover additional survivors or need to correct an error later. The online guestbook feature is something people overlook. It collects messages that would otherwise be lost. I recommend turning it on even if you plan to print in the newspaper, since it costs nothing extra and provides a searchable archive of condolences.
Cost Breakdown
A standard obituary run in the Paris News for one publication is typically between seventy-five and one hundred fifty dollars depending on word count. Ridgeway's base obituary preparation service runs around one hundred dollars as a standalone fee. If you bundle it with a full funeral service, it is often included or discounted to fifty dollars. Their website memorial page has no additional charge beyond the basic funeral contract. If you are trying to place the obituary in multiple out-of-state newspapers for distant relatives, Ridgeway does not handle that directly. You would need to submit those yourself through their respective newspaper websites or use a third-party obituary distribution service. Their system is set up for Henry County and surrounding areas in West Tennessee. Attempting to stretch it beyond that will just create delays. For very short notices, like a simple death announcement under one hundred words, you might be better off posting directly on the newspaper's website yourself rather than going through the funeral home. The processing fee from Ridgeway would eat up most of the savings in that case.
