Gillions Funeral Services managing director Keith Gillions said it would be very difficult to cancel funeral services, so arrangements were already being made to restrict the number of people attending.
"We’ve already cut back our space in our chapel so that it can only fit 100 people. We’ve basically taken out every second row of seats so that we’ve now got social distancing.
"We’re looking at it from the perspective that instead of individual people needing to be 2 metres apart, it’s actually clusters of people, because husbands and wives are going to be together and their kids are going to be with them.
"The goal is to be able to give them enough space for the social distancing side of things."
Mr Gillions said he had noticed at recent funerals, the number of attendees had decreased because people were avoiding them.
He believed funerals would become more private affairs, where only small groups of close family members would be able to gather.
For large funerals which would traditionally draw 400-500 people, the majority of attendees would be able to watch the service live via internet streaming, instead of attending in person, he said.
"With the technologies that we have, we can incorporate people’s input into the services from around the country and overseas.
"We can see that that will help people say farewell and do it sensibly."
Campbell and Sons Funeral Services managing director Clark Campbell said he had not noticed any decrease in the number of people attending funerals yet, but was resigned to the fact attendance numbers would have to be cut.
"We’re hoping to continue to deliver meaningful funerals within the parameters of the restrictions on the number of people allowed to gather.
"Our first step, once we get a restriction on the number of people at gatherings, will be to encourage people to perhaps have family and invited guests only at the chapel or venue, and invite everyone else to watch through live streaming."
Hope and Sons Funeral Directors manager Andrew Maffey said he, too, was encouraging families to invite smaller numbers of guests to funerals.
The alternative was to count funeral guests at the door and send any additional guests home to watch the funeral on live streaming.
