Elizabeth Guthrie is our Adelaide funeral celebrant & overseer of all South Australian bookings. She is also one wonderful human, with a gift for both speaking and writing.
She has a passion for working in the funeral space, whilst being being incredibly open minded in terms of rituals and celebrations of life. Her presence, compassion, humour and general love of a good chat ensures our South Australian clients are so beautifully taken care of. We are proud to have Elizabeth on the Tomorrow team.
Based in Adelaide Hills, Elizabeth looks after our Adelaide funerals.
Every celebrant has a reason they do this work. Elizabeth, what’s yours?
My road to becoming a funeral celebrant started all the way back when 13-year-old me (with braces and a questionable haircut) stood up to speak at my great-aunt’s funeral. At that time, I didn’t have words for it, but I understood the importance of connecting grief, storytelling, and ceremony.
That understanding deepened when my boyfriend and a close friend died when I was in my late twenties. I learned firsthand what it means to need an emotional safe place and how important it is to be guided with kindness and compassion when your world has tipped on its axis.
The decades after that were spent in a whirlwind of life-cycle events: weddings, christenings, and far too many beige and impersonal funerals.
It’s then that I started flirting seriously with the idea of doing death differently. In a single month in 2006, I went to the funeral of my 32-year-old friend, my 97-year-old grandfather, and a stillborn baby – all of them almost indistinguishable from the other. Those years gave me a lot of opportunities to wonder what it would look like if we celebrated the end of life as we do weddings and christenings – boldly, creatively, with intention, filled with deeply personal rituals, joy, music and energy.
Over the past ten years I’ve been very fortunate to have the opportunity to hold space for families as they navigate grief and make decisions about what life looks like after death.
My professional background in event planning, writing, and storytelling, together with my lived experiences and work supporting people after loss, means memorial planning and celebrancy feels like the most natural place to have landed.
What drew you to the idea of working with Tomorrow and what do you think this kind of partnership can offer families?
I love that Tomorrow’s philosophy is to support and empower families to create a really personal, unique memorial that truly represents their person and honours their own grief. A memorial can take any shape the people left behind need or want it to take.
By removing many of the exhausting decisions and steps that come with a traditional funeral, people have the space to take their time and prepare the perfect farewell for their loved one. Whether that’s creating deeply personal rituals, planning a party, gathering friends or family from out of town, or just taking the time to find the perfect venue, it means people can say goodbye in a way that is meaningful and just right.
Tell us about the most extraordinary memorial you’ve ever been part of creating.
My mum’s memorial in 2019 remains the most special (and most extraordinary) for me because I had the opportunity to experience it as a memorial planner, a celebrant, and a griever.
In the weeks before she died, mum spent a lot of time telling my sister and me her strangely specific after-death wishes:
- No funeral (I don’t want people looking at me in a box at the front of the room)
- Tea and coffee in “real china” (buy out all the op shops if you have to)
- Don’t rush (you’ll need time to make it classy!)
The week after she died our extended family, including all the grandchildren, spent time together painting a Daisy Box coffin. One of the things I love about families taking time to plan a memorial is that they can process their grief through creativity (even if they wouldn’t consider themself artistic). Our mum was a very creative person and making her coffin beautiful felt like ‘love in action’, and was incredibly healing.
Three weeks after she died, we hosted a magnificent memorial for 200 people at the McLaren Vale Art Gallery with tea and coffee served in antique china cups and saucers as she’d requested, cakes, live music, interstate guests, flowers from her garden, fancy paper serviettes from her cupboard, children playing outside, beautiful (and funny) speeches, pictures from our family albums in frames around the room. Mum was everywhere, and despite our deep sadness, it was one of the most beautiful days our family has shared together.
And.. what might your own funeral will look like?
One of my favourite things to do is give my friends detailed stage directions for my future memorial. Unlike my mum, it’s unlikely to be ‘classy’. There won’t be any fine china, but there will be an open gin bar. And hot chips.
People think I’m joking when I say I’d like a merch table with t-shirts that say “talked herself to death” and a trash and treasure stall (got to get rid of all those clothes and earrings somehow). I’d like my ashes brought into the room, in a leopard print urn, a good 20 minutes after everyone has arrived with a PowerPoint slide overhead that says “couldn’t even be on time for her own funeral” while Betty Hutton’s version of “Oh It’s So Quiet” plays in the background.
Whatever it is, it will be fun, and slightly unhinged, and exactly what my family and friends need it to be.
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