I heard of a company that will use your remains to plant and grow a tree. I think I will do this after donating all of my usable organs to whoever needs them. If scientists also want to use my body for research purposes, I also would not be opposed to that either. Just cremate what is left of me when they're done, and use my ashes to plant a new tree!

Here in Michigan there is such a thing as a "direct cremation". No funeral home, no service, no casket (canvas cremation bag), no outrageous costs. There are several companies that offer direct cremations for between $600 and $3,000. You might want to do a google search on "direct cremation".

Just have the wake at a good bar...

Go on the internet and google the companies or crematoria in Brevard County that will meet your wishes. I did the same here in Tampa and have given my wife the directions to follow: No funeral or service of any kind. She will take my ashes to Kansas (where my daughters live and where I lived for 17 years. My wife (not my daughters' mother) and my two daughters are to scatter my ashes on a windy point on a lake where I fished often. The only thing I ask them to do while scattering my ashes is to play the "Ashokjen Farewell." The melody is a beautifully poignant melody from Ken Burns's "The Civil War." You can look it up and hear it on YouTube music.

Organ donor, then cremation.

In my will, I requested spreading my ashes in my beloved Cascade Mountains.

I don't care if my daughter, Claire, drives to Stevens Pass, walks six feet into the woods and dumps my ashes on the ground.

I will become fertilizer for trees and bushes.

If all you want is cremation, tell them that. When my mom died, the funeral company took away her body very discretely and cremated her. We got the ashes back in the cheapest possible box and will scatter them at sea with dad’s when he dies.

I need to do the same. I'm going to begin looking into it. The cost is what concerns me. I want to be planted with a tree.

Thankfully here in Australia we have a more secular style of Undertakers where one can request a NON religious style service and ACTUALLY get one.
My 16 year old daughter requested that her service been completely religion free before she passed from cancer and it be a Celebration of her Life rather than a mournful thing. I made certain she got exactly what she wanted with music that expressed who she was and how she was, and still is, loved by me.
I was most pleasantly surprised when the Hospital Chaplain, with whom we'd become very good friends btw, asked most sincerely if he could attend and talk about how he'd spent hours talking with Lorrae, what great person she was, her sense of humour, etc, and how he'd learned from her, in particular, that Atheist are truly decent, honest, open, free-minded, caring people to be admired and NOT to be condemned out of hand.
As he spoke I saw many heads of the religious there being hung in shame and was touched by his open sincerity and candour.

My funeral home that I made my arrangements with promised to keep my service nonreligious

Will you body to a medical school and be done with it. You could be very beneficial to humanity even after your demise.

I started in the Funeral Business when I was twelve, family run! In the next thirty-five years our cremation rate went from 10% to over 75%! We never required a service, plain cardboard box with a piece of plywood to keep it from bending. Unless you're in the bible belt no religious service required. Did have a fellow employee who moved back to Indiana to get away from the cremation type service, he felt everybody needed a religious service!

When my brother died I had him cremated and brought the ashes in a nice blue box and a bunch of pictures of him to a gathering of the family to my other brothers house and we talked about our deceased family member, sang and ate dinner buffet style. I enjoyed this and felt closer to him than I had for years. We didn't go to a Church etc. Many of our family are religious and some of the songs were religious but it didn't matter. I sang and talked till I was hoarse. That's exactly what I would want for me and am planning for it. I f no one who cares about me is still alive then I will just be buried in the family plot. I believe in simple and human ways of dealing with death just as in life.

Unless you've got one foot in the grave and the other one standing on a banana peel, make sure that you don't get caught up in any "El Cheapo" payment plan like my parents did. Back In the 1980s they both joined this program from The Neptune Society, where they each paid in 400 bucks in advance for cremation services, and they were told that when the time came, they would be all paid up, no further costs involved. Well, my dad passed away in 2005, and when we went to pick up his ashes, we were told that the rate had gone up to $1,200! I asked a woman in the office there how that prepaid price of admission (or was it exit?) of 400 bucks GUARANTEED was now so high? She said that they had unexpected cost increases come in since then and their membership list was so large, that it would have bankrupted them to send out notices to everyone who had paid in only 400, to let them know that the cost had gone up. I almost told them to just keep the ashes then and give my mom her 400 back! But I didn't want to look like an ass, and my mom didn't mind paying it, so she forked over another 800 and we left with the remains in a brown plastic box and an American flag, since he was in the USN. They were out of the folded flag display cases, which cost another 5 bucks, so I had to go back a week later and get that from them. But Mom was happy that we were fulfilling his wishes, so that was what was important. Then she passed in 2012 and the cost for her was around 1,250. We didn't have any services for them.

Contact a local crematorium and find out their procedures. Find out if you can have your remains picked up directly from home or hospital and brought to the crematorium, or if you must go through a funeral home.

Have a solid talk with family about your wishes, and put those wishes in writing. Entrust someone who you KNOW will honor your wishes with your final disposition, rather than entrusting that duty to someone you HOPE will follow your wishes.

This is what I’m doing.

[thelivingurn.com]

Or this
[google.com]

I have also been thinking of this lately. Looking into paying for my cremation ahead of time. I am lucky though. My oldest daughter will be put in charge and she will keep the religion out of it all.

I'm planning on having my body donated to science and when they are done with it have what is left cremated. My ashes along with those of my mother and my husband will then be interred in the grave next to my daughter. I made my daughter in law promise that if they had a memorial, it would not take place in a church.

I'm sure you can find a cooperative, and by that I mean accomodating and flexible funeral home, since I was able to find one in my area of Iowa. I will have cremation and a memorial service at a Unitarian church. All the music and readings will be secular and I have already picked them out and given copies to the funeral home and the church.

Not sure where you live. In Philly we have one crematorium who cares for all cremations in the city. They do provide for family members as well as other funerary professionals to pick up the remains. I would say to start with those offering cremations.

Avoid the funeral home and go directly to the crematorium. They do advance payments as well. That's what I did here in Oklahoma and my husband was collected at the hospital and cremated all for $650. It would have cost at least 3K at a local funeral home. We then had a party and celebrated his life. Instead of an urn, I put him in a cookie jar which I know he would have preferred.

Because I was doing lots of International Travel I joined a Burial Society that Escrowed the $1,700 payment that I made and guaranteed that my remains would be picked up no matter where I died, cremated and shipped to San Francisco for scattering in San Francisco Bay or given to my daughter at her request. I always carry a card with the Toll Free Number to call in the event of my death.

I'm glad you brought this up. It's an important topic and all the comments were very helpful.

I have made know that I want to be cremated and have no religious ceremony. What they do with my ashes is up to my survivors.

Funeral homes will work with you on this but they push religion. I suppose it's because they make more money that way. I'm going to be cremated but the funeral home owner told me he didn't have enough faith to be an atheist. LOL

Use some keywords in a Google search for your area and what you want. You might be surprised.