Do Amish Embalm Their Dead?

The Short Answer: Usually Yes, but Not the Way You'd Expect

Most Old Order Amish communities do embalm their dead — but they strip out virtually everything mainstream funeral homes consider standard practice. No cosmetics. No hair styling. No reconstructive work. No makeup, even in cases of severe physical trauma. The community's guiding principle is blunt: "How it is, is how we take it."

The reason for embalming is practical, not cultural. Amish funerals follow a compressed three-day timeline with a multi-day open-casket viewing held inside a private home — no air conditioning, no refrigeration, no climate control. Chemical preservation makes that possible.

How the Process Works

A local "English" funeral director — typically one with years of experience serving plain communities — takes the body from the home after death and performs the embalming at a commercial facility. The family gives explicit instructions:

• Chemical preservation only. The standard arterial embalming that prevents decomposition.
• No cosmetic enhancement. No foundation, blush, lip color, or skin tinting. The face should look exactly as it did at the moment of death.
• No hair styling. The hair is washed but left unstyled. For women, it remains parted and covered by the prayer cap.
• No reconstructive work. If the death involved physical trauma, the community does not request prosthetics, wax reconstruction, or concealment.

Once embalmed, the funeral director dresses the body in simple white long underwear — a modesty layer — and transports it back to the family home in a plain pine casket. From that point forward, the commercial funeral home's involvement ends entirely.

What Happens After the Body Returns Home

Family members of the same sex as the deceased take over. They wash the body and dress it in white burial garments:

• Women are dressed in their wedding attire — a plain white dress, white cape (the triangular shoulder covering), and white apron, preserved in a cedar chest specifically for this purpose. A married woman wears her white prayer covering; an unmarried woman is buried in her black church cap.
• Men are dressed in a white shirt, white trousers, and a white vest. No metal zippers, snaps, or visible plastic buttons — fastenings that the Amish historically rejected as symbols of worldly vanity.

The white garments symbolize the equality of all souls before God and the biblical promise of resurrection.

When Amish Communities Skip Embalming

Some ultra-conservative groups — particularly Low German-speaking Mennonite colonies in Mexico, Bolivia, and Belize — do not embalm at all. In traditional Brazilian settlements, this means burial must happen within 24 hours. These communities sometimes leave the body completely unattended overnight in a simple meetinghouse, rejecting the concept of a wake or vigil to guard the soul (which they believe is already secure in God's hands).

In the United States, state law plays a role. Pennsylvania — home to the largest Amish population — requires embalming, refrigeration, or placement in a sealed container if final disposition doesn't occur within 24 hours of death. Since traditional Amish viewings can run across two days without refrigeration, families often use embalming rather than refrigeration or a sealed container. Ohio has no blanket embalming requirement but prohibits public funerals when death involved certain communicable diseases.

The FTC Funeral Rule and Plain Families

One friction point arises when outside family members — diaspora children, interfaith spouses, or secular executors — work with a mainstream funeral director unfamiliar with plain customs. The Federal Trade Commission's Funeral Rule protects families here: funeral homes cannot legally require you to purchase a premium casket, cannot refuse to accept a third-party casket (including a community-made pine box), and cannot charge "handling fees" for doing so.

If you're coordinating embalming for a plain burial, the Amish & Mennonite Funeral Guide includes a printable directive you can hand directly to the funeral director — specifying no cosmetics, no restorative work, and the exact handling instructions that plain communities expect.