Most people assume a memorial QR code goes on a headstone. It can, and it is the option with the most rules attached and, in practice, the fewest scans.
Here are twelve places families use, roughly in order of how easy they are, with what each one needs and who actually reads it.
1. On an urn or casket
Permission: none.
The easiest option in the country. It is your property and nobody needs to approve anything. Fix with adhesive, never drill. Scanned mostly by visiting family, and by the household constantly in the first year. Detail in the ashes and urns guide.
2. On the back of a framed photograph
Permission: none.
Unglamorous and, we would argue, the single most-scanned location there is. The frame in the hallway is passed a dozen times a day, and visitors who ask about the photograph can be handed the whole story instead of a summary. Costs nothing extra and requires no decisions from anyone.
3. On a memory box
Permission: none.
The watch, the glasses, the last shopping list in their handwriting. A plaque on the lid turns a drawer of objects into something a grandchild can open and understand in thirty years.
4. On a memorial bench
Permission: none on private land; a council scheme otherwise.
The best public option by some distance. A plaque on a bench is expected rather than unusual, so approval is easy, and it is scanned overwhelmingly by strangers who sat down, read the name and became curious. The 80mm plaque suits it well, because people read a bench from sitting height rather than crouching. See the bench guide.
5. On a garden stone or slate marker
Permission: none on your own land.
Where ashes were scattered in a family garden, or simply somewhere to go. Choose marked metal rather than anything printed, because it takes the full British winter.
6. Beside a memorial tree or rose
Permission: none at home; scheme rules in a park or woodland.
On a low stake or a stone at the base. Check the rules first if it is a memorial woodland, because many prohibit permanent markers on principle.
7. On a headstone or lawn memorial
Permission: yes, and usually a mason.
The one everyone thinks of first. Needs a memorial permit, the consent of whoever holds the exclusive right of burial, and in most council cemeteries a BRAMM or NAMM registered mason to fit it. Budget several weeks and £100 to £350 all in. Full process in the headstone rules guide.
Worth knowing: if the headstone has not been commissioned yet, adding the plaque to the original order costs a fraction of a separate visit later.
8. In a churchyard
Permission: the diocese, and possibly a court. Fit it: low and discreet.
The hardest of the twelve. Church of England churchyards run under ecclesiastical law, and anything outside the diocesan regulations needs a faculty. Small, low, unbranded and in a sympathetic material is the version most likely to be approved. See the churchyard guide.
9. On a columbarium niche or memorial wall
Permission: the burial authority.
Many walls specify a uniform plaque style, leaving no room for an addition. Ask, and while you are asking, ask how long the niche is leased for. These are frequently ten or twenty-five year terms rather than purchases, and families are often unaware.
10. Printed on the order of service
Permission: none. Cost: nothing.
Not a plaque at all, just the same code printed. Everyone who attends leaves with a way back to the page, including the people who will not be at the graveside again. Give the printer the code when you send the artwork.
11. On memory or thank-you cards
Permission: none.
The version that actually fills the page. Handing twenty-five people a card with the link, and a direct question to answer, returns memories the family never had. This is what memory cards are for, and it is the difference between a page one exhausted person writes and a page fifty people write.
12. At the club, the workplace or the ground
Permission: ask the committee.
The most underrated on this list. Thirty years at a bowls club, a rugby ground, a brass band or an allotment site means there is a community who knew a version of the person the family never met. Committees are usually delighted rather than bureaucratic, and the memories that come back from there are frequently the best ones on the page.
Which to choose
If you want it scanned, choose somewhere people already go: the frame in the hallway, the bench in the park, the club. If you want it where the person is, choose the grave or the urn and accept fewer scans.
Most families end up doing both, and there is no reason not to. Plaques are inexpensive next to everything else in this process, and any number of them can point at the same page. One on the headstone, one on a bench, one at home, all leading to the same photographs.
Our memorial plaque with memory page is £70, 80mm, in brushed steel or brushed black, with the page included. Multiples pointing at one page are the normal case rather than the exception.