Cremation makes a lot of people squeamish. Personally, I think it's the best way and it leaves the family a lot more money. When my wife died 11 years ago, cremation cost $1300. The cheapest steel casket I saw was over $2000. I saw wood ones cheaper but with those, most cemeteries require a vault. The reason is that wood caskets will eventually collapse leaving them with a large divot to fill in. Steel or vaults won't collapse.
Then, with cremation, you don't have to hire a hearse. Just pick up the ashes from the crematorium and do what you want with them. I have a nephew who's a potter and he made us a very nice urn. You can have a complete DIY funeral. That's what we did. It cost virtually nothing which is what my wife wanted. There's a small cemetery near Boise on land that was homesteaded by my great grandfather. He sold a couple acres to the county for a cemetery over 100 years ago. Most of my relatives on Mom's side are buried there. If you bury an urn, you can dig your own hole as it only has to be the size of a 5 gal bucket. We did get a nice headstone which is in a row with my father and brother.
funny side note: This cemetery allows up to 4 urns in a single plot so you can almost have a mass grave if you want to keep everyone together. My dad died 10 months before my wife who had terminal cancer at the time. We were at the cemetery for Dad's burial and knew that in due time my wife would be in the next plot. We'd buried Dad's urn and were standing there talking. My wife, who kept up a pretty good humor about it all, looked at her plot and said "You're young enough that you'll probably remarry. There's room for 3 in there."
