Home › Funeral Planning › Funeral Planning Services › AZ Memorials Review
The Supplier Funeral Homes Buy From Will Sell You a Burial Shroud Direct
A green burial shroud runs $652.03 for the men’s set and $830.26 for bamboo at AZ Memorials. Those are not retail markups on a memorial gift site. That is a working mortuary supply house, the kind that sells caskets and embalming supplies and grave markers to funeral homes, and it has a checkout button open to you.
Most families never learn that a place like this exists. You search for a burial shroud, you find two or three artisan makers and a lot of pages explaining what a shroud is, and none of them tells you what one costs or where the funeral industry itself buys. So you either pay a boutique price or you give up and let the funeral home handle it, which is the same thing as paying a boutique price with an extra set of hands in the middle.
A green burial shroud costs $652.03 for the men’s set or $830.26 in bamboo at AZ Memorials, a mortuary supply house that sells to families at the same published prices it gives funeral homes. Biodegradable water burial urns there start at $37.64. A plain natural fiber wrap, which most green cemeteries accept, costs under $50.
- Every US order ships free from AZ Memorials, and anything over $300 is insured at no extra cost
- There is no express option at any price: ground runs 5 to 7 days, with made-to-order processing on top of that
- Returns run 30 days, though engraved, personalized and made-to-order pieces are final sale
- Support is email only, answered inside 24 to 48 hours, and no phone number is published anywhere on the site
- AZ Memorials’ catalog holds exactly two burial shrouds, a men’s set and a bamboo shroud, with none marketed for women
- Family owned for 25 years, AZ Memorials lists more than 1,000 memorial items
What earns the score is access: the quantity ladder is still visible on the product page, which is the tell that you are seeing what the trade sees rather than a consumer markup. What costs it is speed and recourse. A family inside the first seventy two hours after a death cannot be served here, and a buyer who wants to talk to a person before spending several hundred dollars will not get that call. Order early, measure twice, and read the return terms before you click.
What the Trade Pays, and Why You Can See It
A funeral home ordering six shroud sets pays $567.27 each. You pay $652.03 for one. That gap, about thirteen percent, is the entire difference between the trade price and yours, and on a casket it would routinely be three hundred percent. The ladder is printed on the product page because AZ never built a separate consumer store to hide it behind.
The objection worth answering first is timing, and the answer is that it only bites if you wait: order three weeks out and the ground transit stops mattering entirely. What almost nobody tells you is that the EPA already recommends a natural fiber shroud for a burial at sea when no casket is used, so this is the one product on this page a federal agency has endorsed for the purpose in writing. Six people who have never done this before can carry your father steadily, and that steadiness is the only reason a set exists instead of a length of cloth.
How I Checked This Vendor
Every price and policy on this page came out of AZ Memorials’ own systems on September 11 and 12, 2026, not from a press kit and not from memory.
I opened the affiliate dashboard first, because the money mechanics tell you what kind of company you are dealing with faster than an about page does. What it showed: the program runs on OpenCart’s built-in affiliate module rather than a network, attribution is a browser cookie written by a tracking parameter, and the link generator they provide to affiliates is broken and returns nothing for any URL format. There is no click reporting of any kind on their side, only a transactions ledger. Their commission rate is not exposed to affiliates anywhere in the system, which is a platform limitation rather than a company choice.
Then I read their own policy pages rather than assuming. That is where the shipping reality came from, in their words rather than mine. And I pulled both shroud landers and the biodegradable urn category directly to confirm every price and stock status printed here.
There is no named contact to quote, and that is itself a finding worth stating plainly: AZ Memorials publishes no phone number and no staff names anywhere on the site, by stated policy, because the same small team packing orders answers the email. You will not get a person on the phone before you spend $652. For some readers that is disqualifying, and it should be.
What AZ Memorials Actually Is
AZ Memorials started twenty five years ago as a family business in Palatine, Illinois, opened its online store in 2002, and now runs out of Taylor, Arizona with more than a thousand memorial items in the catalog. The navigation tells you what kind of company it is faster than any about page could: urns, pet urns, modern seamless urns, jewelry for ashes, flower vases, mortuary and funeral supplies, stone memorials. That sixth category is the one that matters. Mortuary supplies is not a consumer department. It is where the trade shops.
The proof is in the pricing. Pull up the men’s shroud set and the price steps down as the quantity goes up, from $652.03 to $567.27. The bamboo shroud does the same thing, $830.26 down to $722.33. Nobody builds a quantity ladder for a family burying one person. That ladder is there because funeral homes order six at a time, and the reason you can see it is that AZ never bothered to build a separate consumer storefront with the trade pricing hidden behind a login.
I want to be precise about what that does and does not mean. It does not mean AZ is the cheapest option, and it does not mean a shroud is the right purchase for your family. It means the thing you are shopping for has a real wholesale price, that price is published, and no one is standing between you and it.
Green Burial Shroud Prices, and What Comes in Each Set
Two shrouds, two very different products, and the price gap between them is not about quality.
Green burial shroud pricing, verified September 2026
The men’s shroud set at $652.03 is the working option. It is a set, meaning the cloth plus the structure that lets six people carry a body without a casket underneath it, which is the entire engineering problem a shroud has to solve. The bamboo shroud at $830.26 is the material upgrade, undyed bamboo fiber, chosen by families who want the wrap itself to be part of the point rather than just the means.
Both are listed under mortuary and funeral supplies rather than under memorial products, and both were verified live and in stock on September 11, 2026. Prices on this catalog move slowly; these two were unchanged from a reading taken sixteen days earlier. Check the exact figure at the lander before you buy, because a price on a page is only ever as current as the last person who looked.
What a shroud costs is not the same question as what a shroud burial costs. The cemetery sets most of that number: opening and closing fees, whether a vault is required, whether they permit a shroud at all. Our guide to funeral and burial laws covers what your state actually requires versus what a cemetery merely prefers, and the difference between those two is usually worth a few thousand dollars.
What Does a Green Burial Wrap Actually Cost, Option by Option
Four ways to put a body in the ground without a manufactured casket, with the real spread between them. The cheapest one is not a trick and it is not a lesser burial.
| Option | Cost | Carried by | Best when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plain natural fiber cloth Linen, cotton, hemp or wool | Under $50 | Cemetery crew, using straps | The budget is tight, or the shroud is symbolic and staff handle the lowering |
| Men’s shroud set at AZ Memorials Cloth plus carrying structure | $652.03 $567.27 at trade quantity | Six family pallbearers | Your family is carrying the body themselves across uneven ground |
| Bamboo shroud at AZ Memorials Undyed bamboo fiber | $830.26 $722.33 at trade quantity | Six family pallbearers | The material itself is part of the point, not just the means |
| Biodegradable casket Wicker, bamboo, pine or cardboard | $50 to $1,895 | Rigid frame with handles | You want the carrying solved without a shroud, or the cemetery prefers a container |
Shroud prices read off AZ Memorials’ product pages on September 11, 2026. Casket range from our own biodegradable casket guide. None of these figures includes the cemetery’s opening and closing fee, which is usually the largest line on the bill.
What a shroud set buys that plain cloth does not
Here is the sentence no company selling shrouds will write for you. A burial shroud can be a length of undyed natural fiber cloth. Linen, cotton, hemp, wool. It can come from a fabric store, it can be a bedsheet your mother owned, and in most green cemeteries it is entirely acceptable. Cost, somewhere between nothing and fifty dollars. If your only goal is a burial with no embalming, no vault, and no manufactured casket, you do not need to spend $652 to get there, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling.
So what is the $652 buying? Carrying. A plain wrap has no handles, no board, no load rating, and no way for pallbearers to move a body with steadiness and dignity across uneven ground. A shroud set is a system built so that six people who have never done this before can do it without fumbling. If your family is carrying your father to the grave themselves, which is very often the point of choosing a green burial, that system is the difference between a ceremony and an ordeal.
My honest read after looking at both: buy the set if your family is doing the carrying and this is a full burial. Use plain cloth if the funeral home or the cemetery crew is handling the lowering, if the budget is tight, or if the shroud is mostly symbolic. Both are real green burials. Only one of them needs a purchase order.
If you want a third path, a biodegradable casket sits between the two on price and solves the carrying problem with a rigid frame. We break the whole category down, with prices, in our guide to biodegradable and green burial caskets, and the basket casket buying guide covers what to look for in the weave and the load rating.
Before any of this is settled, confirm the cemetery will take it. The Green Burial Council certifies burial grounds and publishes a provider map, and calling the cemetery office with one question, whether they permit shrouded burial without an outer container, saves you from buying something beautiful that cannot be used.
Biodegradable Urns for Water Burial, From $37.64
The other half of this catalog is where the prices stop being a stretch. AZ’s biodegradable urn category runs twenty four products, and the ones verified live on September 11 ran from $37.64 for a water soluble bag to $219.54 for a full size camo urn, with most of the water burial pieces landing between $59 and $155.
A biodegradable urn is defined by what it is built to fail at. It has to hold ashes long enough to be carried, handed between people, and set on the water with two hands, then break down on a schedule measured in minutes or in seasons depending on which one you buy. Every other urn on the market is engineered for the opposite outcome.
A water burial urn is the subset most people actually came looking for, and the floating boat urns are the ones families ask about after they have seen one. A Fair Winds boat sits on the surface for a few minutes, long enough for everyone aboard to watch, then takes on water and goes down whole. The tree urns and the dolphin urns work the same way, different shape, same promise: the vessel is designed to disappear rather than to last.
Compare that to what a funeral home will show you. A standard cremation urn is built to survive a century in a niche, and if your plan is to put it in the ocean, you are buying permanence you specifically do not want and paying more for it. This is the cost pattern that runs through every part of this process: the default option is engineered for a use case that is not yours, and nobody flags it, because the default option is the one with the margin.
If the cremation side of this is still new to you, our walkthrough of what actually happens during cremation explains how much you will be handed and why urn capacity is measured in cubic inches.
Scattering Tubes, and What They Do That an Urn Does Not
A scattering tube starts at $69.30 in this catalog, and it is the most practical thing in the catalog as well as the least discussed.
Search for a scattering urn and you will be shown containers, because that is what the word urn pulls up. A scattering urn and a scattering tube are not the same object, and the difference decides how the day goes.
An urn is a container. A scattering tube is a tool. It has a perforated top that opens with a thumb, it pours at a controlled rate instead of all at once, and it is sized so one person can hold it in a wind with one hand. Anyone who has scattered ashes from an open urn on a hillside knows exactly why that matters, and knows that nobody warned them.
The mini tubes at $75.38 solve a different problem. When four siblings want a share and none of them wants to be the one holding the whole thing, small tubes let you divide it at the funeral home rather than in somebody’s kitchen with a spoon. That is not a pleasant sentence to read. It is a far worse afternoon to live, and it happens constantly because no one plans for it.
The Urn That Costs $37.64 and the One That Costs $300
A funeral home will show you an urn built to last a century in a niche. If you are putting it in the ocean, you are paying a premium for permanence you actively do not want. AZ Memorials’ biodegradable line starts at $37.64 for a water soluble bag and tops out at $219.54, with the floating boat urns most families choose landing between $59 and $155.
The objection here is not price, it is whether a cheap urn feels like enough. It is worth naming: a vessel designed to come apart on purpose is not a lesser object, it is the correct tool for a scattering, and the twenty four options in that category exist because the shape of the day varies. Pick the one that fits how your people will actually stand on that boat, and spend the difference on getting everyone there.
Burial at Sea: What Federal Rules Require Before You Buy Anything
If the ashes or the body are going into the ocean, the federal government has already decided several things for you, and getting this wrong after the purchase is worse than getting it wrong before.
What burial at sea costs, and what it does not
Start with the part everyone assumes wrong. The federal side costs nothing. The EPA issues a general permit under the Marine Protection, Research and Sanctuaries Act, published at 40 C.F.R. 229.1, and there is no application, no prior paperwork, and no fee payable to the EPA at all. Nobody sells you a burial at sea permit, because there is nothing to sell.
What you are actually paying for is the boat, and the number moves with one variable more than any other: depth. Cremated remains may be placed in ocean water of any depth, so almost any charter that can reach three nautical miles will do. Non-cremated remains need 600 feet under the keel, which means a longer run, a larger vessel, and a bigger bill. If the quotes you are getting feel far apart, that is usually the reason, and it is worth asking a captain how far out he has to go before you compare two prices as though they were the same trip.
The vessel is where your money goes. These are the conditions it has to meet:
- Cremated remains may go into ocean water of any depth, but no closer than three nautical miles from land.
- Non-cremated remains require three nautical miles from land and water at least 600 feet deep. Off east central Florida, the Dry Tortugas, and west of Pensacola to the Mississippi River Delta, that depth requirement rises to 1,800 feet.
- Everything placed in the water has to be readily decomposable. Plastic flowers, synthetic wreaths, tombstones, and monuments are all prohibited.
- Pets and other non-human remains are not covered by this permit at all.
- You must notify the EPA within 30 days after the burial, through their Burial at Sea Reporting Tool, filed with the region the vessel departed from. No death certificate is required with that report.
Why the EPA recommends a shroud
Now the part that connects this section to the top of the page. For a full body burial at sea without a casket, the EPA’s own recommendation is to wrap the body in a natural fiber shroud and add weight, such as a steel chain, so it sinks rapidly. The federal agency regulating the practice recommends the exact product category this page is about, in writing, on a public page. Verify it yourself at the EPA’s burial at sea guidance, which is also where the reporting tool lives.
The practical order of operations is simple. Book the vessel first, because the captain knows the local depth contours and will tell you whether your intended spot clears 600 feet. Buy the shroud or the urn second. Report within 30 days third. A charter captain who has never heard of the reporting requirement is telling you something useful about the charter captain.
Ordering From AZ Memorials, Step by Step
Five steps, and the only one with a deadline is the first.
- Call the cemetery before you spend anything. One question decides this whole purchase: do you permit shrouded burial without an outer burial container. A yes means everything below applies. A no means you need a different cemetery or a biodegradable casket, and you just saved $652.
- Open the shroud sets and compare the two. Start at the men’s shroud set. You will land on a product page with the price, the quantity ladder, and an Item specifications panel. That panel is the one you actually need.
- Read the processing time, then add 5 to 7 days. Processing is listed per item because much of this catalog is made to order, and it is separate from transit. There is no express option to buy your way out of it. Add both numbers, compare to your service date, and if it does not clear, stop here and buy locally.
- Order at least three weeks out, and measure first. Anything made to order cannot be returned, so the decision has to be right before you click rather than after it arrives. Free shipping applies to every item, and anything over $300 is insured at no extra cost.
- Keep your 30 day window, and know what it covers. Stock items in new condition can go back within 30 days with an RMA requested by email first, though you pay return shipping and the original economy shipping cost comes out of the refund. Past 30 days there are no returns for any reason, so open the box the day it lands.
How Fast It Actually Ships, and When That Is Too Slow
This is the section where I have to be blunt, because the honest answer will save some readers a real mistake.
AZ Memorials does not offer express shipping. They say so plainly on their own delivery page. Every shipping option, including the free one, is 5 to 7 day ground within the US, and that clock starts only after the in-house processing time, which is listed per item under Item specifications because much of the catalog is made to order. Gold jewelry, rings, plaques and markers run 1 to 5 weeks depending on customization, and AZ’s own words are that those items should not be purchased if you need them immediately.
So if a service is scheduled inside the next week, this vendor cannot serve you for it, and no amount of wanting it to work will change the ground transit time. That is not a knock on the company. It is what a made-to-order supply house is. It does mean that if you are in the first seventy two hours after a death and a date is already set, your path runs through a local funeral home or a fast shipper, not through this catalog.
Where AZ is genuinely strong is the planned burial: a green burial being arranged over two to four weeks, a scattering trip in a month, a pre need decision made while there is time to think. For those, the free shipping is real on every item, anything over $300 ships insured at no extra charge, and on custom memorials they email a proof for your approval before anything goes into production.
The return policy, read as written
The return policy is narrow and you should read it as written. Returns are accepted on some merchandise within 30 days of delivery, in new and unused condition with all original packaging, and only with an RMA issued by email first. Anything personalized, engraved, or made to order is not returnable at all. You pay the return shipping, and if you used the free shipping option, the cost of that economy shipping is deducted from your refund. Past 30 days there are no returns for any reason.
Read that once more if you are buying a shroud, because the practical consequence is this: measure and decide before you order, not after it arrives.
Who Should Look Elsewhere
Four kinds of readers should close this page and go somewhere else, and I would rather say so than take the click.
If the funeral is this week, go local. Transit time is transit time.
If you want to speak to someone on the phone before spending several hundred dollars, AZ is email only by design, and that will frustrate you at the worst possible moment.
If you are looking specifically for a burial shroud made for a woman, AZ carries exactly two shrouds, a men’s set and a bamboo shroud, and lists nothing marketed for women. The bamboo shroud is not sold as gendered and is used for anyone, but if that distinction matters to your family, a specialist maker will serve you better.
If the money is the crisis rather than the product, start with cost help instead of a catalog. Our funeral financial resources page collects the fundraising, financing and assistance options in one place, and the free funeral planning worksheets will tell you what you are actually obligated to pay for before you spend anything.
And if you are still deciding where the burial happens rather than what goes in the ground, that is the earlier question and it deserves to be answered first. Our funeral home directory covers all fifty states, and the funeral planning services directory holds the rest of the vetted partner roster alongside AZ.
One Thing to Know About Your Rights Before You Order
The FTC Funeral Rule gives you a right that a lot of families never hear about: a funeral provider cannot refuse to handle a casket or urn you bought somewhere else, and cannot charge you a fee for doing it. You can order the urn online, have it shipped to your house, and hand it to the funeral home. That is federal, it is not negotiable, and it is the entire reason a catalog like this one is reachable by an ordinary family.
Be careful with the edge of that rule, because precision protects you here. The Funeral Rule names caskets and urns. It does not name shrouds. A shroud is not a casket, so acceptance of one is governed by your state’s rules and the cemetery’s own policy rather than by that federal guarantee. In practice, cemeteries that permit green burial permit shrouds, and cemeteries that require an outer burial container are the obstacle, not the funeral home. Ask the cemetery, in that order, before the cloth arrives.
We keep a full plain language breakdown of your rights under the FTC Funeral Rule, and you can read the rule’s consumer summary directly at the Federal Trade Commission. Between those two, you will know more about what you are allowed to do than most of the people you will be sitting across from.
The Short Version
A working mortuary supply house will sell a family the same shroud it sells funeral directors, at a published price, with the quantity ladder still visible on the page. That is unusual, it is verifiable, and it is worth knowing about whether or not you buy anything.
What we would want for our own family is this. Ask the cemetery what they permit. Decide whether your people are carrying the body themselves, because that single answer is what separates a $652 set from a $30 length of linen. Give yourself more than a week. Then buy the thing that fits, from whoever sells it honestly.
Memorial Merits exists because those three questions almost never get asked in time, and the cost of not asking them lands on families who are already carrying enough.
If You Have Two Weeks, You Have Every Option
Almost everything hard about this purchase disappears with runway. Two weeks turns AZ’s 5 to 7 day ground into a non-issue, leaves room for the cemetery call, and gives you time to open the box and check it against the 30 day window. The families who end up disappointed here are the ones who found this page four days before a service, and that is a calendar problem rather than a vendor problem.
If that describes you, buy locally and come back to this page for the scattering, which almost always happens months later and has no deadline at all. If you do have the time, the shroud sets are the reason this vendor is worth knowing about.
Common Questions About Green Burial Shrouds
What are the downsides of green burial?
Three real ones. Fewer cemeteries accept it, so your choice of burial ground narrows and may mean travelling further. Many conventional cemeteries require an outer burial container, which a green burial specifically avoids, and that single policy rules out more sites than any other factor. And there is no embalming, so the timeline between death and burial is shorter and less flexible, which matters if family are flying in.
How much does a green burial shroud cost?
A retail shroud set runs $652.03 for the men’s set and $830.26 for bamboo at AZ Memorials, verified at their checkout on September 11, 2026. A plain length of undyed natural fiber cloth, which most green cemeteries accept, costs between nothing and about fifty dollars. The gap between those two numbers is not quality, it is the carrying system: handles, a board and a load rating that let six people move a body steadily.
Does AZ Memorials sell a burial shroud for women?
No. A search of the AZ Memorials catalog returns exactly two shrouds, a men’s shroud set and a bamboo shroud. The bamboo shroud is not sold as gendered and is used for anyone, but if you are specifically looking for a shroud marketed for a woman, this retailer does not list one and you will want a specialist maker instead.
Can you make your own burial shroud?
Yes, and in most green cemeteries a handmade shroud is entirely acceptable. It needs to be undyed natural fiber, linen, cotton, hemp or wool, large enough to wrap fully with an overlap, and strong enough at the seams to bear weight if anyone will lift by the cloth. Confirm two things with the cemetery before you sew: that they permit shrouded burial without an outer container, and whether they require a rigid board underneath for lowering.
Are green burials legal in the US?
Yes, in every state. No state law requires embalming for a routine death, and no state law requires a casket for burial. What varies is local: some counties regulate burial depth and distance from water, and individual cemeteries set their own rules about outer containers. The obstacle is almost never the law, it is the cemetery’s policy, so call the cemetery office first.
Do you need a permit for burial at sea?
No permit application and no fee. The EPA issues a general permit under the Marine Protection, Research and Sanctuaries Act at 40 C.F.R. 229.1 that already covers you. The conditions are what bind: cremated remains at least three nautical miles from land at any depth, non-cremated remains three nautical miles out and in water at least 600 feet deep, 1,800 feet off parts of Florida and the Gulf, only readily decomposable materials in the water, and notification to the EPA within 30 days after the burial.
How fast does AZ Memorials ship?
Not fast enough for a funeral this week. AZ Memorials offers no express shipping at all. Every option including the free one is 5 to 7 day ground, and in-house processing is added on top of that because much of the catalog is made to order. Their own guidance is that customized memorials and jewelry, which run 1 to 5 weeks, should not be purchased if you need them immediately.
Will a funeral home accept a shroud I bought myself?
Usually, but the federal guarantee people cite does not actually cover it. The FTC Funeral Rule says a provider cannot refuse a casket or urn you bought elsewhere and cannot charge a handling fee for it. A shroud is neither, so acceptance comes down to state rules and the cemetery’s own policy. In practice the funeral home is rarely the obstacle; a cemetery that requires an outer burial container is.
 | As Featured In CBS · ABC · Fox · AP · Business Life Magazine · The New York Telegraph · Insider Weekly · Tampa Bay Observer · Benzinga · SociologyGroup.com · Animal Hospice Group · MemoriaSky.com Member in the Spotlight, Home Funeral Alliance · Cake.com Professional Directory · Cited by Google AI Overviews |
