Whitney Houston Funeral to See Gospel Singer Marvin Winans Deliver Eulogy
The funeral for singer Whitney Houston will be held on Saturday in New Jersey, it has been announced.
The invitation-only service will be held at the New Hope Baptist Church, where Houston sang for the first time in public.
Gospel singer Marvin Winans, who has been a long time friend of Houston, will be delivering the eulogy at Houston's Newark, N.J. funeral. The service will be officiated by Paster Joe Carter, who also knew Houston for decades.
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The funeral will be an invitation-only affair beginning at noon on Saturday. The New Hope Baptist Church seats around 1,500 people but those without invitations would not be admitted into the church.
Reports had speculated that the Houston family would make the service public, but to the disappointment of millions of the singers' fans who hoped to pay their respects to the star at a public memorial, the family announced their plans to keep the funeral private on Monday.
"(The family has) shared her for 30-some years with the city, with the state, with the world. This is their tome now for their farewell," Carolyn Whigham of the Whigham Funeral Home told the Associated Press.
"The family thanks all the fans, the friends and the media, but this time is their private time," she added.
The Whigham Funeral Home handled the burial arrangements for Houston's father, John Russell Houston, after he died in 2003. Houston's body was transported in a golden hearse on private jet to her hometown of Newark on Monday.
It has been reported that Houston's mother, the Grammy-award-winning Cissy Houston, has been inconsolable since her daughter's death.
In a 2009 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Houston was candid about her drug abuse and her mother's struggle to get her daughter clean.
"I'm not loosing you to the world. I'm not loosing you to Satan. I'm not doing this. I want my daughter back," Houston told Winfrey.
Houston was found dead in her Beverly Hills Hilton hotel room on Saturday afternoon. The official cause of death of the singer will be announced pending toxicology reports, which could take weeks to determine.
