One beautiful summer evening last month, as sunlight streamed through an open window, my mother, my siblings and I gathered round the bed in which my father had died a few moments earlier. He was 95, and we’d known it was coming. Despite a heart-wrenching descent into dementia in his final months, it was a peaceful end to a long and contented life.

There is surprisingly little time for farewell and reflection when someone close to you dies. The wonderful nursing home where my father spent his last 20 weeks said we could take as long as we wanted before his body was removed. But, uncertain of the physical consequences of death in this summer’s unusual heat, after a couple of hours we called a funeral company we had earlier identified.

The next morning, we started talking about the ceremony. We knew we didn’t want an overtly religious occasion, or anything too formal, and we were aware that many people use a professional celebrant to conduct funerals. But, we wondered, why? Why have a stranger leading a ceremony for someone so central to our lives – a person who had never met him and would only be told by us what to say? Instead, why not do it ourselves?

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It turns out we were not alone in thinking this. Experts in the funeral business are reporting an increase in the number of services conducted by family members, with some people going even further by dispensing altogether with the services of an undertaker, and preparing their relative’s body for cremation or burial themselves.

Adrian Pink of Town and Country, the independent funeral company we used for my father, said: “In the last five years, we’ve seen more and more family-led services.” One crematorium he has regular contact with recently hosted five family-led funerals in one day.

Leedam, a company which specialises in natural, or woodland, burials, reports similar findings, with the number of families choosing to conduct ceremonies themselves increasing, albeit slowly. “There’s no steep curve but a gentle rise as some families feel they want to take back control,” said founder James Leedam, who estimates about 3% of his clients take this option.

In particular, the baby boomer generation – now facing their own mortality – are challenging the established way of doing things. “The funeral sector is being shaken up big time by all sorts of different factors,” said Leedam. “For example, David Bowie opting for a no-frills, direct cremation got quite a lot of people thinking that they don’t have to follow a set pattern.”

In a direct cremation, a body is disposed of without ceremony and with no family or friends present. The ashes are later returned to the relatives, who may hold a scattering ceremony or another memorial event in a place of their choosing. The cost is usually £1,000 to £1,500, about a third of that for a conventional crematorium funeral. Even the Co-op – the biggest UK chain of funeral providers – is launching a no-frills service in acknowledgement of changing trends.

Why pay someone £200 to £250 to repeat back exactly what you’ve told them about your loved one? Adrian Pink, Town and Country funerals

Last week passengers on the London Underground might have noticed brightly coloured adverts saying: “Not keen on tradition? Go your own way.” The company behind the ads, beyond.life, wants to challenge the established order of the death business. “We set up beyond.life primarily because we realised what a rip-off the death market is,” said James Dunn. “People are being ripped off not just in terms of cost, but also in terms of service. They can’t always do what they want to for a loved one, and our mission is to give people more control.”

The online service aims to offer a straightforward guide to funerals and funeral directors, writing a will, settling an estate and other issues relating to death. “Most people organising a funeral are vulnerable – they rarely have previous experience, and to top it all, they’re bereaved,” added Dunn.

A couple of generations back, nearly all funerals were conducted by a vicar or another faith leader according to a set formula. These days there is much more flexibility and idiosyncrasy, and secular celebrants are common. Even so, many funeral chains offer “a set format, or a series of fixed packages, and they don’t like deviating from them”, according to Pink. “Sometimes I suggest to families that they might consider designing and conducting the funeral themselves. Why pay someone £200 to £250 to repeat back exactly what you’ve told them about your loved one? If there’s someone in the family who is confident about speaking to an audience, and can keep the event running to order, it’s very empowering.”

But things can go wrong with a DIY funeral. “I had to extend a grave by six inches in front of 250 people on the hottest day of last year,” said Leedam. “Larger funerals that are not choreographed and have no structure or master of ceremonies to lead the way can be awkward.”

Fran Hall of the Good Funeral Guide said: “Although there’s an increased awareness that it’s OK to do your own ceremony, I don’t think it will reach parity with funerals led by celebrants or faith leaders.

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“Even though things have changed very rapidly, there is still only a small minority of people able or willing to take ownership of a ceremony themselves. You have to be able to translate facts into words that will hold people’s attention, and be able to craft a ceremony, while simultaneously being plunged into the unknown depths that is grief – and not everyone can or wants to do that.”

In our case a big family, including my mother, shared the responsibility of organising and conducting my father’s funeral. His four children and and nine of his 11 adult grandchildren played a part: speaking, reading or carrying his coffin into the crematorium. Even two of his great-grandchildren contributed a few squeals and gurgles.

It was a family send-off for a family man, and we wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.