I dress dead bodies for a living. This is a helpful guide on how to dress the deceased.

After watching this, you should have no problems, in case in which you would need to do it by yourself.
I show the complete process of securing the body, so the fluids won't stain the clothes.
You can see how to handle a dead body as well with the hip and arm grab, because you need to flip it on it's side while dressing it.
I prepared and dressed hundreds of bodies so far, so these are my own techniques, that seems to be optimal for me.
When the body has rigor mortis, then you need to 'break it' (hence the bone breaking myth), which means excercising the limbs, so everything loosens up.
The limbs crack in the joints sometimes, which strenghtens the above mentioned myth.
I never broke someone's bone and can't imagine a situation in which that could happen or would be required.
Sometimes the rigor mortis is in full force and you can do nothing to break it.
It would just need some time to go away but since the funeral is already scheduled, the body needs to be dreesed as is.
Some people, who were lying in bed for years, have shortened tendons from being in the fetal position.
The tendons would need to be cut to straighten the legs and no family wants that, so the body is put into a casket as it died in the bed, on it's side.
To dress a big dead body you need two persons and sometimes even three or more.

Where I live, there are not many morbidly obese people, so it's a rarity to dress someone over 120kg/264lbs. I only cut clothes when they are to small.
Families often deliver old clothes which are at least a size too small.
Normally I don't cut clothes on the back and use my trademark rolling technique instead.
It's a neat trick that I came up with by myself and taught it to people that are way longer in this business than me.
Usually I dress the corpse by myself but sometimes with a member of a family of the dead and that's a whole different story, but I'm good at it and empathetic enough to arrange an atmosphere of quiet professionalism and just genuine human understanding and care.
I like to guide these poor people on how to put the socks on their father or mother and they always walk out way calmer and sometimes even smiling.
It's a great feeling to be able to change someone's mood in such hard situation, just by doing your job the best that you can.
I'm realy grateful for that and I don't think that I will be able to feel grater satisfaction than when I'm my own version of a mythical Charon. It's a priviledge and a duty.
In this tutorial I used a medical phantom and dressed it in my own clothes.
The whole thing usually takes me about an hour (up to three), from opening the bag, to the body looking presentable in the casket. There are lot of useful tricks in here, so please pay attention.

CHAPTERS
0:00 Removing the body from the bag
1:18 Cleaning and stuffing
2:31 Diaper and underwear
3:37 Socks
4:34 Shirt
6:37 Tie
6:56 Jacket
7:34 Trousers
8:13 Shoes
8:50 Unstuffing and hair and makeup
9:32 Final touches
9:58 Outro

Get to know me better here:   / mentalmartin  
Check out my place about Death:   / funeralparadise