Funeral program and slideshow builder

The idea

Within days of a death, someone in the family gets handed the program job, and they do it in Word or Canva at 1 am, fighting text boxes and printing bifolds that come out in the wrong page order. Etsy sellers move thousands of 15-dollar templates that still require the grieving person to do the layout work themselves.

The wedge is the guided flow: eight plain questions in order, three restrained templates, and the two hard technical bits handled invisibly, which are bifold imposition so a home printer folds correctly, and obituary text that auto-fits its space. Add the matching slideshow, which is otherwise a separate late-night PowerPoint job, and the whole task collapses to twenty minutes.

Who pays

The buyer is a family already spending 7 to 10 thousand dollars on the funeral; 19 dollars one-time is not a price decision, it is a relief decision. No subscription, restrained checkout, watermark-free only after payment via Stripe. Distribution is search-led because the need is unpredictable and urgent: funeral program template and order of service queries have steady volume, and Etsy’s own results are the competition to outrank. Funeral homes are a later channel, not v1.

MVP scope

• Three restrained templates with guided one-question-per-screen flow
• Resumable sessions via emailed capability link, no account required
• Bifold PDF with correct imposition, bleed and trim mark toggle, embedded fonts
• Matching slideshow at a shareable link plus MP4 download
• Stripe one-time checkout with free watermarked preview
• Skip for v1: funeral home multi-seat accounts, printed-and-shipped programs, guestbook or memorial pages, additional template packs

Build Remembrance, a Next.js web app that produces a print-ready funeral program and a matching memorial slideshow from one guided flow. The user is grieving, sleep-deprived, and on a deadline; every design decision follows from that.

Guided flow, one step per screen, always resumable without an account (state saved to a capability URL emailed to them): 1) choose one of three templates (classic serif, gentle floral, modern minimal), 2) upload a cover photo with auto-fitting crop, 3) name, dates, and an optional epigraph, 4) obituary text (plain textarea, no rich-text fiddling; auto-fit type size to the space with a warning when it overflows to a second inside column), 5) order of service as a simple repeatable list (item plus person, e.g. Eulogy, read by Sarah), 6) hymns or readings with optional full text, 7) family acknowledgement line, 8) additional photos for the slideshow.

Output one: a bifold A4/Letter program PDF via React PDF with correct imposition (pages ordered 4-1-2-3 so home printing folds correctly), 3 mm bleed and trim marks toggle for funeral-home printing, and an embedded-fonts print-ready file.

Output two: a slideshow page at a shareable link, same template family, photos crossfading with names/dates title card, suitable for a venue screen via a laptop; include a downloadable MP4 fallback rendered server-side.

Pages: template picker, the guided steps, preview (spread view), checkout, downloads.

Pricing via Stripe: full watermarked preview free; 19 dollars one-time unlocks PDF and slideshow. No subscription, no upsells, restrained copy throughout.