Wake vs. Funeral vs. Visitation vs. Memorial Service vs. Repast: What Each One Actually Is

The short answer: a visitation is scheduled time to greet the family and pay respects, usually at a funeral home. A wake is a visitation, often with the body present and often with a faith or cultural tradition attached. A funeral is the formal service, held with the body present. A memorial service is the same kind of service held without the body present, which usually means it happens after cremation or burial. A repast is the meal shared after the service.

Families and funeral homes use these words loosely and interchangeably, and regional and religious usage varies enough that no single definition holds everywhere. If you have been invited to something and are not sure what it is, the safe move is to ask the funeral home rather than the family.

Here is the practical version:

What is a visitation?

A visitation is a scheduled block of time when friends and community members come to greet the family and pay respects, usually held at a funeral home in the days before the funeral. The name is literal: you are visiting the family.

What happens at a visitation:

• You arrive at any point during the posted hours. There is no start time you are expected to hit.
• You sign the guest book with your full name and how you knew the person.
• You look at the photo displays and memory boards.
• You greet the immediate family, usually standing in a receiving line, for ten to fifteen seconds.
• You approach the casket or urn if you want to. This is optional and no one is keeping track.
• You stay 20 to 45 minutes and then leave.

A visitation may or may not include the body. When it does, and the casket is open, people often call it a viewing. When there is no body present, it is still a visitation.

Visitations typically run two to four hours, often in an evening block such as 4:00 to 7:00 p.m., occasionally across two days. Some families schedule a short visitation on the morning of the funeral, in the hour before the service starts.

What is a wake, and what happens at one?

A wake is a gathering to keep company with the person who died and their family, usually held the evening before the funeral. In current American usage, wake and visitation often mean the same event, and many funeral homes use the words interchangeably.

The word carries older roots than the modern schedule suggests. It originally referred to a prayer vigil, from an earlier sense of "wake" meaning to remain awake and keep watch. There is a widespread misconception that wakes existed to see whether the person might wake up. They did not. In Celtic tradition, family and neighbors kept watch beside the body through the night, and the practice traveled with Irish and other European immigrants into American funeral customs.

Where a wake differs from a plain visitation, it tends to be in these ways:

• The body is more often present, and in Catholic and Irish tradition frequently in an open casket.
• There is often a prayer component. A Catholic wake may include a rosary or a formal Vigil for the Deceased led by clergy or a lay minister.
• The atmosphere is frequently warmer and louder than people expect. Food, drink, storytelling, and laughter are traditional rather than inappropriate. Wakes are often described as having a more positive emotional tone than the funeral itself, because the focus sits on the life rather than the death.
• It may be held at a home rather than a funeral home, particularly in families keeping older customs.

What to do at a wake

1. Arrive during the posted hours, in the middle of the window if you want a shorter line.
2. Dress as you would for a funeral. Dark, conservative, and subdued. Our what to wear to a funeral guide covers the details.
3. Sign the guest book.
4. Greet the family briefly. One or two sentences, then move so the line keeps flowing.
5. Approach the casket if you wish. In Catholic tradition, kneeling briefly at the prie-dieu and saying a short prayer is customary; standing quietly for a moment is equally acceptable.
6. Participate in prayers if they are said, or stand respectfully in silence if the tradition is not yours.
7. Talk to people. Wakes are where the stories come out. Ask the family what the person was like at twenty.
8. Stay 30 to 60 minutes unless you are close family, in which case you will likely be there for the duration.

How long does a wake last?

A typical American wake lasts two to four hours, most often in an evening window. Catholic wakes with a rosary usually build the prayer into a set time within that window, often the last 30 minutes.

Longer forms still exist. Traditional Irish wakes ran through the night and sometimes across two or three days. Some families hold multi-day wakes when relatives are traveling internationally. In several Asian and Pacific Islander traditions, wakes routinely run three to seven days.

As a guest, you are not expected to stay for the whole thing. Thirty to sixty minutes is a complete visit.

Wake vs. funeral: what is the difference?

A wake is the informal gathering before the funeral. The funeral is the formal service itself.

If you can only attend one, attend the funeral when you were close to the person who died, and attend the wake when your relationship is primarily with a surviving family member. The wake gives you actual time with them. The funeral does not.

Attending both is normal for close friends and family.

Visitation vs. funeral: what is the difference?

The difference is the same as wake versus funeral, with one useful distinction: a visitation can be held after the funeral, and a viewing cannot. Because a viewing involves seeing the person who died, it has to precede the burial or cremation. A visitation is simply time with the family, so some families schedule it as part of the post-funeral gathering instead.

Etiquette differs in one meaningful way. At a visitation, conversation is the point. At a funeral, silence is. Guests who talk through a visitation are behaving correctly; guests who talk through a funeral are not.

Funeral vs. memorial service: what is the difference?

A funeral is held with the body present. A memorial service is held without it. That is the whole distinction, and everything else follows from it.

What follows from it:

• Timing. A funeral is bound to the days immediately after the death, typically three to seven days. A memorial service can be scheduled whenever the family chooses: two weeks later, on what would have been a birthday, or the following summer when everyone can travel.
• Location. Funerals happen in funeral homes, churches, and chapels. Memorial services happen in backyards, community halls, breweries, beaches, and community centers. NFDA's 2025 consumer research found that 58.3% of respondents had attended a funeral at a non-traditional location.
• Structure. Funerals follow an established order of service. Memorial services are frequently built by the family from scratch, with open-mic remembrances, slideshows, and music.
• Dress code. Funerals default to dark and formal. Memorial services often specify something else, up to and including a request for color.

Cremation is why memorial services have become so common. The NFDA projects a 2025 U.S. cremation rate of 63.4%, more than double the 31.6% burial rate, and forecasts 82.3% by 2045. When a family chooses cremation, the service is no longer tied to the calendar of the burial, so a large share of families now hold a memorial service weeks or months later instead of a funeral within the week.

A celebration of life is a kind of memorial service with an explicitly life-focused tone. Our guide to what a celebration of life is covers how those are planned and what to expect.

What is a repast?

A repast is the meal shared after a funeral or memorial service, where family, friends, and community gather to eat, tell stories, and support each other. You will also see it written and hear it said as repass, and both refer to the same gathering.

"Repast" is the dictionary spelling, from Old French repas, meaning meal, which traces to Latin repascere, to feed again. For centuries it described any meal. Today the word has faded from general English almost entirely, surviving mainly in this one context. "Repass" is a widely used variation, particularly common in African American church traditions where the post-funeral meal is a deeply rooted custom, and it appears on funeral programs and church bulletins across the country. Neither spelling is wrong.

A repast is also frequently called a funeral reception, and some families distinguish between the two, treating the repast as the smaller, more intimate meal and the reception as the larger open gathering. Most families use the terms interchangeably.

What happens at a funeral repast

• Where: a church fellowship hall, a funeral home reception room, a restaurant back room, a community center, or a family member's home.
• When: immediately after the service or the graveside committal.
• How long: one to three hours, with guests coming and going.
• Food: a buffet, often potluck, frequently featuring the food the person who died loved. In many communities the church's kitchen ministry or a group of neighbors organizes it.
• Cost: typically covered by the family, though friends and community members commonly contribute food or offer to help cover it.
• Tone: noticeably lighter than the service. Storytelling, laughter, and children running around are all normal and welcome.

Repast etiquette

• You do not need to change clothes. Repasts almost always follow directly from the service.
• Go if you are invited, even briefly. The family notices who stayed.
• Thirty to forty-five minutes is a complete visit if you are not close family.
• Bring food only if food is being coordinated, and coordinate through whoever is running it. Ten lasagnas and no bread is a real outcome.
• Talk about the person. This is the part of the day that exists for exactly that.
• Do not treat the open bar as an open bar.
• Offer to help clean up. Someone always needs it and nobody ever asks.

Which of these does a family actually need?

None of them are required. A family can hold all five, or one, or none.

Common combinations:

• Traditional full arrangement: visitation or wake, funeral, graveside committal, repast. Usually within a week of the death.
• Cremation with a service: visitation, funeral service, then cremation, then a later interment of the cremated remains.
• Direct cremation with a memorial later: no visitation, no funeral, a memorial service or celebration of life weeks or months later. Our guide to direct cremation explains how that works.
• Nothing formal at all: a family gathering, a meal, and no public service. This is an increasingly common and entirely legitimate choice.

The memorial service timeline and our funeral planning guide walk through the sequencing and the decisions in the order they come up, and the average cost of a funeral covers what each element adds.

What happens to the cremated remains between the service and whatever comes next

For families who choose cremation, there is a stretch that none of these five words describes: the period after the memorial service, when the cremated remains are home and the question of what happens next is still open.

That period is longer than most people expect. In Parting Stone's national study of 1,000 U.S. adults who had received a loved one's cremated remains, 76% had not carried out a final plan. Most were not stuck for lack of information. Most simply had not found an option that felt right, and the remains stayed on a shelf while the question stayed open.

Families resolve that question in many ways. Scattering in a meaningful place. Burial or a niche in a columbarium. Keeping the remains at home permanently as an intentional choice. Cremation jewelry. Dividing among family members. A memorial tree or reef.

Solidified remains are one more option in that set. Parting Stone transforms virtually all of a person's cremated remains into 40 to 80+ smooth stones through a patented process Parting Stone pioneered, which gives families something they can hold in a hand, display on a shelf, share among siblings, carry while traveling, or scatter. Some families do this before the memorial service and pass the stones around the room. Others do it years later.

If that is worth a closer look whenever you are ready, our guide to what solidified remains are explains the process, and what to do with cremated remains lays out the full range of options side by side.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a wake and a funeral?

A wake is the informal gathering before the funeral, usually the evening prior, where guests come and go over two to four hours to support the family and share stories. A funeral is the formal service, typically 30 to 60 minutes, with a fixed start time, a set program of readings and remembrances, and the body present.

What is the difference between a visitation and a funeral?

A visitation is scheduled time to greet the family and pay respects, held over two to four hours with guests arriving whenever they can. A funeral is the structured service everyone attends together. Conversation is expected at a visitation and not during a funeral.

What is the difference between a funeral and a memorial service?

A funeral is held with the body present, which ties it to the days immediately after the death. A memorial service is held without the body present, usually after cremation or burial, which means it can be scheduled weeks or months later and held almost anywhere.

What is a repast?

A repast is the meal shared after a funeral or memorial service, also spelled and spoken as repass and often called a funeral reception. It usually runs one to three hours in a church hall, funeral home reception room, restaurant, or family home, and the tone is noticeably lighter than the service.

How long does a wake last?

A typical American wake lasts two to four hours, most often in an evening window. Some traditions run considerably longer, including multi-day wakes in Irish, Asian, and Pacific Islander customs. Guests are not expected to stay for the whole thing; 30 to 60 minutes is a complete visit.

What do you do at a wake?

Arrive during the posted hours, sign the guest book, greet the family briefly in the receiving line, approach the casket if you wish, participate in or stand respectfully through any prayers, and spend time talking with other guests. Dress as you would for a funeral.

Can you have a wake and a memorial service?

Yes. Some families hold a wake or visitation shortly after the death, then hold a memorial service weeks or months later when relatives can travel. Cremation makes this sequence straightforward, because the service is no longer tied to a burial date.