Getting Your Family Notice Published Through Rogers Pickard
Most people don't realize how much work actually goes into filing an obituary properly. I've spent years helping families navigate this process, and the hardest part isn't writing the words. It's making sure everything lands where it needs to land before the service date. Rogers Pickard operates as one of the larger funeral and memorial service providers in their region, and their obituary placement system handles everything from basic death notices to full legacy pages. The interface they use for submissions has improved over the years, but there are still specific steps most families miss on their first attempt.
Rogers Pickard Obituaries Remembering Lives Chronicling Legacy
The platform supports several tiers of notice. A standard death notice runs for seven days across their print and digital channels and typically costs between eighty and one hundred twenty dollars depending on local paper rates. Their legacy page option gives you a permanent online space where you can upload photos, write extended biographical content, and accept condolences. That runs roughly two hundred to three fifty dollars and includes a printed plaque at the memorial site. Here is how the submission actually works. You start at the Rogers Pickard website and navigate to their obituary section. From there you select whether you want just a notice or a full legacy page. The system will ask for the decedent's full legal name, date of death, surviving family members, service details, and a cemetery or cremation designation. They also require a government-issued photo ID for verification, which slows things down if you don't have it ready. I ran into a real problem last November when a client submitted an obituary for his mother and forgot to include her maiden name. The newspaper partner rejected the notice because the name on the death certificate didn't exactly match the submitted version. I had to pull up the county clerk's office records to confirm the correct spelling, then resubmit through a different channel. It cost the family an extra forty dollars in revised placement fees and set the publication back by two days. The workaround is simple: before you fill out the form, get a copy of the death certificate and go through it line by line. Every middle initial, every hyphen, every apostrophe matters.
There is a common misconception that you can draft the entire obituary on your phone while waiting at the hospital or the funeral home. You can technically do it, but the formatting options are extremely limited on mobile. I recommend using a desktop or laptop so you can see how the layout will actually appear. Their system allows up to three photos per legacy page, and they must be at least four hundred by six hundred pixels. Anything smaller gets pixelated in the print edition, which makes portraits look unprofessional. One thing nobody tells you about these placements is the editing window. Once a notice goes live, you have approximately twenty-four hours to make corrections without being charged extra. After that window closes, any changes trigger a new full-price placement. I've seen families discover a wrong phone number or a misspelled name six hours after publication and panic. If you catch an error outside that window, your only option is to publish a correction notice, which doubles your cost. The process takes between fifteen and forty-five minutes depending on how organized your information is. If you have the death certificate, service times, and family names all typed out beforehand, you can usually complete the submission in under twenty minutes. Without those documents at hand, it routinely stretches past half an hour and often requires a second session.
Get the Full Details
Payment is processed online with a credit or debit card. They do not accept checks for online submissions, though if you call their office directly you can arrange a check payment with a longer processing timeline of two to three business days. That delay means your obituary will not go live until the check clears, so plan accordingly if your service is within a week. The system also offers a proofreading service for an additional fifteen dollars. Most people skip it to save money, but I consistently recommend paying it. The typesetter catches typos that automated spell-check misses, like confused names or incorrect dates that your eyes gloss over because you've read the same sentence twenty times already. For fifteen dollars it prevents the embarrassment and expense of a corrected notice.
What the Service Actually Includes
A standard Rogers Pickard obituary notice gets published on their website, in the affiliated newspaper's print edition, and in their daily email digest sent to subscribers in the local area. The print version typically runs for seven consecutive days unless you pay for a longer duration, which starts at two hundred dollars for fourteen days. Legacy pages are different. They function as a permanent memorial website with photo galleries, video uploads up to ten minutes total, music selection, and a guestbook where visitors can leave written condolences. The page stays online indefinitely and can be shared via link on social media or included in memorial programs. The downside is that once content is uploaded, removing or replacing individual photos requires a support ticket that takes one to two business days to process. There is no instant edit button for published media files. There is also an anonymous condolence option for people who may not want their name attached to a public message. Some families find this valuable for workplace colleagues or distant acquaintances who prefer privacy. Others find it creates unnecessary suspicion and ask the funeral home to block anonymous entries entirely. You decide this when setting up the page, and it cannot be changed afterward without contacting support.
If you need the obituary published quickly, same-day placement is available between nine in the morning and two in the afternoon Eastern Time. Submissions after two o'clock roll over to the next business day's publication. This cutoff is strict and not negotiable, so schedule your submission early in the day if timing is critical.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
The most frequent error I see is omitting the full names of surviving children. Some families list only grandchildren or only spouses, which creates confusion for readers trying to understand the family structure. Always include every immediate surviving relative with their full name and relationship. This is the content that people remember and reference later. Another mistake is listing the wrong address for the service. I had a case where the family used the parents' home address instead of the funeral home address, and three dozen people drove to the wrong location on the morning of the service. Double-check every street address and suite number before submitting. Finally, do not assume that publishing through Rogers Pickard automatically publishes the obituary on social media platforms or genealogy sites. Their system does not push content to Ancestry, Find a Grave, or Facebook automatically. If you want cross-platform distribution, you need to handle those uploads separately or ask the funeral director to coordinate them as an additional service.
The most efficient approach is to gather all documentation in one sitting, complete the submission during morning hours, pay the proofreading fee, and verify the proof within the twenty-four hour correction window. Following that sequence prevents nearly every issue I have encountered over the years.
