Ananova:

A Romanian man staged his own funeral while he was still alive to make sure everything went to plan.

Marin Voinicu, 73, from Vadastra in Olt county, invited fellow villagers, relatives and friends to his home to mark his "future passing".

The village priest even accepted an invitation to officiate a funeral sermon at the man's home.

Mr Voinicu said: "I did everything by the book. I even dug my own grave in the cemetery and laid down in it to see how it feels.

"I asked my relatives to wail at my headstone for a test run. I was fully satisfied with my funeral."

He explained he decided to organise his own funeral because he didn't want to leave the task on his family's shoulders.

And his family agreed to go along with it because they felt it would be easier to organise the event when they were not distracted by grieving.

Mr Voinicu's daughter-in-law Oncica said: "If we had done this after his death it would have been harder.

"Everybody would have cried a lot but this way nobody shed a tear. We had such a good time one could have said it was more like a wedding than a funeral."