Can a family member schedule the burial without a funeral director?

Yes. The National Cemetery Scheduling Office will work directly with next of kin at 800-535-1117. Many families use a funeral director because they're familiar with the process, but it isn't required.

How long does it take to get a burial date confirmed?

There's no fixed timeline published by VA, but funeral directors typically report getting a confirmed date within a few business days of the initial call, depending on the cemetery's availability and how quickly discharge documentation is verified.

What if the veteran's DD214 was lost?

Call the scheduling office anyway and explain the situation. You can fax a copy later to 866-900-6417 or email it to NCA.Scheduling@va.gov once you locate it, and the office can advise whether other records can verify service in the meantime.

Are weekend burials available at national cemeteries?

Burials generally take place Monday through Friday. Some cemeteries offer limited scheduling around certain federal holidays, but weekend availability is the exception, not the rule.

Does scheduling a burial cost anything?

No. Calling the National Cemetery Scheduling Office to arrange the burial itself costs nothing. Separate expenses, like a funeral home's services or transportation of remains, are billed by those providers and may be eligible for separate VA reimbursement.

How Do I Schedule a Burial at a National Cemetery?

A national cemetery burial isn't something you book online or reserve years in advance the way you might a cemetery plot elsewhere. It's arranged with a single phone call, made after death, to a dedicated National Cemetery Administration (NCA) office. Here's exactly how that process works and what to have ready before you dial.

Who Do You Call?

The National Cemetery Scheduling Office handles every national cemetery burial request in the country. You reach it at 800-535-1117 (TTY: 711). The office is staffed Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. ET, and closed on federal holidays, according to VA's official scheduling page.

Either the next of kin or a funeral director can make this call. In practice, most families let the funeral home handle it, since the funeral director calls scheduling offices regularly and knows what information gets a burial confirmed fastest. But you're not required to go through a funeral home — you can call yourself.

What Do You Need Before You Call?

Have this information on hand. It speeds up the call significantly and reduces back-and-forth.

For the deceased veteran	For the next of kin
DD214 or other discharge document showing honorable service	Full name and relationship to the veteran
Full name, sex, Social Security or military ID number	Social Security number
Date of birth and date of death	Phone number and address
Place of death	—
Marital status	—

You'll also want to have decided, or be ready to discuss:

Preferred cemetery — the one nearest the family, or the one the veteran requested
Casket or cremation
Memorial type — headstone, flat marker, columbarium niche cover, or medallion
Religious emblem or inscription preferences, if any

If you don't have the discharge papers in hand yet, say so. The scheduling office can often verify service through other records while you track down the DD214 separately.

What If You Don't Have the Discharge Papers Yet?

This is one of the most common holdups. If the DD214 is lost or you're still searching for it, you can fax a copy to the scheduling office at 866-900-6417 once you find it, or scan and email it to NCA.Scheduling@va.gov. The office will tell you during the call whether they can proceed with a tentative date while documentation catches up, or whether they need it in hand first. Don't wait to call until every document is assembled — start the call, then follow up with paperwork.

If you're not sure whether the veteran even qualifies, read Who Can Be Buried in a VA National Cemetery? before you call, so you know what to ask.

National cemeteries accept both casket burial and cremation. If the veteran will be cremated, tell the scheduling office up front — it affects which section of the cemetery is available and whether the interment will be a ground burial of the urn or placement in a columbarium niche. Cremation can also shorten the timeline in practice, since it removes some of the coordination that casket burials require around a funeral home's transport and preparation schedule. Either way, the same phone call and the same documents apply. There's no separate process to learn for cremation.

What Happens After You Call?

The scheduling office confirms eligibility, checks available space at the requested cemetery, and works with you or the funeral home to set a date and time. Burials at national cemeteries generally happen Monday through Friday, with limited exceptions around some federal holidays. There's no set number of days — it depends on the specific cemetery's schedule and how quickly documentation clears — but funeral directors typically report a burial date within a matter of days of the initial call, not weeks.

Interment in a national cemetery itself, along with the gravesite, opening and closing, a headstone or marker, and perpetual care, is provided at no charge to the family. That's separate from allowances like the VA plot allowance, which applies only to burial in a private cemetery. If you're trying to understand which allowance applies to your situation, see What Is the VA Plot Allowance and When Does It Apply?

What About Moving the Veteran's Remains?

If the veteran will be buried in a national cemetery some distance from where they died, transportation costs can sometimes be reimbursed. That's a separate benefit from the burial scheduling process itself, and it has its own eligibility rules — see Does the VA Reimburse Transportation of a Veteran's Remains? for how that works.

Can You Schedule a Burial Before Death?

You can establish eligibility for national cemetery burial in advance through VA's pre-need determination process, so the family isn't figuring that out for the first time during a crisis. That process confirms whether the veteran qualifies and can note a preferred cemetery, but it does not reserve a specific gravesite or set a date. The actual burial date itself is only scheduled after death, through the same 800-535-1117 call described above. Pre-need eligibility just removes one step — and one source of uncertainty — from an already difficult day, since the family already knows the answer to whether he qualifies before they're grieving and trying to plan a funeral at the same time.

What to Do About It

If a death has already occurred, call 800-535-1117 today, even if you don't have every document gathered yet. If you're planning ahead for a living veteran, ask them where their DD214 is now, and consider looking into pre-need eligibility determination so the family isn't searching for discharge papers during the worst week of their lives. Either way, write down the scheduling office number somewhere the family will actually find it — a phone, a folder, a note taped inside a drawer. It's the one call that gets everything else moving.