Losing a loved one is a really tough thing. You are totally overwhelmed emotionally and faced with the daunting task of planning a funeral — not to mention being the liaison between your immediate family and pretty much everyone you all know. It is quite a challenge for anyone, even someone who is hyper-organized like me. Bob and Erich Wetzel were amazing as they helped guide us through this very difficult process. From the first contact by phone to our in-person meeting to plan the ceremony to the ceremony itself, the Wetzel family took care of our family like we were actual family. It is no mystery to me why they have been in business for more than a century. We worked closely with Bob and especially Erich, who impressed even this 24⁄7 plugged in gal with his speed of his reply to any email I sent at any time of day. I think at most I waited 2 hours for a reply ever, and many times I had a reply within a few minutes. In addition to the tremendous respect, care and professionalism shown to our family, I think it’s important to also note that the Wetzels brought a bit of good common sense and even, yes, a bit of humor. They helped us transition from that place where you’re just shell-shocked that your loved one has died to the place where you are remembering good stories and laughing with each other — celebrating someone’s life rather than mourning their loss. They were low-pressure and made us feel like the only thing we needed to focus on was making the best decisions for us. There was no pressure to buy the most expensive option or be fancier than we wanted to be.(We just aren’t really fancy people, after all.) The Wetzels were tremendous communicators, with clear and concise directions. They answered all of our questions, gave us material in writing, included reminders for items we might forget and also, as I mentioned above, entertained every single question we had at all hours of the day. Due to this excellent communication, there were no surprises and the ceremony was exactly how we expected it to be and was beautiful. One other thing I wanted to mention: This is the first time I’ve planned a funeral, but I do feel like one thing you are paying the funeral home to do is to help take care of all the nitty gritty details for you. When you are planning a funeral, you don’t want to be bothered with figuring out how to obtain death certificates, how to file for a permit or how to interact with the cemetery. Wetzel and Son was able to do all of these things for us with very minimal information or effort needed on our part. You are so overwhelmed during this time that you really need someone to help you with the details, and the Wetzels were pretty much flawless in this respect. They dealt with the cemetery arrangements, filed the right permits, put the paperwork through for death certificates and probably a bunch of things I don’t even know about. For the ceremony day, they made sure the flowers were all in place on time, they ensured that everyone in our party made it to the proper place, and they even stood by to help the ladies wearing heels navigate the site. They even had a relationship with the restaurant where we had the luncheon following the ceremony and placed a discreet call to the restaurant once our ceremony started to give an exact guest count and the approximate time of arrival. These details matter for sure, but it is such a relief to hand them off to someone you trust and not worry about them yourself. Even things like making sure all of the cards from the flower arrangements made it into our hands after the ceremony were all taken care of before we could even think to do them. A+ all the way. Worth every penny we paid and then some.