About Us

When a loved one had passed, you can trust McAlister-Smith Funeral & Cremation to guide you through the arrangements necessary and ensure that your family has a proper, respectful and meaningful ceremony celebrating the life of your loved one who has passed. In keeping with tradition, our staff remains committed to offering families the finest in personalized service. Our belief that every funeral or memorial is an opportunity to honor, celebrate and remember is just as strong today as it was 134 years ago.

McAlister-Smith Funeral & Cremation offer caring service so your family and friends can do their grieving in a safe and supportive environment. We are here to help you with any appropriate request to make the memorialization special. We honor tradition while also embracing change. So, we invite you to drop by any time to tour our state-of-the-art locations and gain a fresh perspective on what a funeral home is and what one can provide. Call us today!

When a loved one dies, many people experience feelings of deep heartache and loss. It’s common to look to our foundations and core beliefs to comfort and help us cope with the death of someone close to us. Our ideals may be traditional in nature, rooted in our beliefs, cultural practices, or world view. They may be time-honored and shared among a faith community, or they may be our own take on the greater meaning of life and death. Whatever your perspective, our funeral home and cremation professionals in West Ashley, SC can help you to personalize a funeral service that will honor your fallen loved one in the way that will bring comfort to you and your family.

What is Personalization?

Personalization of funeral services is a growing trend in the industry. It is a process of discerning meaningful details about the person who has died and including these in the funeral experience. This tailored approach to funeral preparation can create one final connection among surviving family, friends, and their deceased loved one.

Personalization is no one “thing”, and there is no instruction manual on how to do it well. Rather, it is about being observant and attentive to those things that defined who the deceased was in life and finding ways to work those details into the funeral events.

It can be memorabilia focused around activities and hobbies that the person enjoyed in life. It can also be the music they loved, books they were inspired by, quotes, stories, life experiences, conversations, memories, clothing, accomplishments, location of services, etc. An experienced funeral and cremations professional in West Ashley, SC can help you to find expressive ways to personalize a final goodbye.

For example, where appropriate, personalization can be as distinctive as a special Harley-Davidson or horse-drawn carriage services to a cemetery plot. Some have arranged for cremated ashes to be cast and placed in a coral reef garden, or even blasting them into space to become cosmic dust. But personalization doesn’t need to be something sensational. Even simple acts such as creating compressed gemstone art with ash remains, or buying the deceased’s favorite flowers is a form of funeral personalization.

Why Should Funeral Services Be Personalized?

Instead of a formal, uninteresting proceeding, personalization takes a routine funeral ceremony and enriches it to become a celebration of a life well-lived. People want to connect with their fallen loved one in one final act of loving goodbye, where the experience is personal and meaningful.

Without personalization, many funerals can feel cold and empty. Like just another blasé tribute service conducted by a stodgy funeral director with pretty words but no feeling. When people who actually knew and loved the deceased in life attend an unfeeling service, it can do more injury than good. They may walk away with greater grief than they came with, leading to deeper emotional pain.

Advance Funeral Planning

To personalize your own funeral services, you can pre-arrange all aspects of the service down to the last detail. The act of planning and paying for death care long before it happens is an act of love. Leaving your affairs to family to sort out is not completely avoidable, but it can be minimized by advance preparation. This forethought benefits surviving families by removing the burden of arranging all of the logistics, event coordination, and payment for a funeral or memorial service.

You can document beforehand whether you prefer cremation and inurnment or embalmment and casket burial, funeral, or memorial services, where you want services to be held, what memorial products you want, where you want to be buried, who you wish to conduct services, etc. You even get to control the amount of money that is spent on the occasion without feeling any anxiety or concern that the cost will be at someone else’s expense.

Grief Support

Sometimes there is a need to talk with someone for additional emotional support. If you or someone you love is having a difficult time moving beyond your heartache after a death, it may be helpful to talk to a grief counselor. The act of working through the hurt with a compassionate professional can be intensely helpful to those who need it. A counselor can be called on for help at any time, whether shortly after a death has occurred or even years beyond. Their training and guidance can aid individuals to heal from the trauma and turmoil that they have experienced in their loss.

Qualified Funeral and Cremation Care in West Ashley, SC

McAlister-Smith Funeral & Cremation West Ashley and McAlister-Smith Pet Cremation are both located at 2501 Bees Ferry Rd Charleston, SC 29414. If you’re searching for an attentive and experienced provider that can guide you through the funeral and personalization process, call our caring funeral and cremations professionals in West Ashley, SC for a conversation. Reach  at (843) 722-8371 anytime.

Funeral & Cremation FAQs

Advantage of pre-planning?

• It lets you decide how you’d like to be remembered
• It takes the burden off of your family and friends
• It gives you the ability to pre-pay if you wish. Learn more.

How much is a vault?

• Vault prices range from $995 to $4435 . A complete pricelist is available at the funeral home.  Contact us.

How do I talk to my children about death?

• Be open and honest, encourage communication, and share your own feelings, you and your children will eventually cope with painful times and begin your healing journey together. Learn more.