Dolly Parton’s final requests and funeral plans revealed

Heartbreaking news came on August 25 that Dolly Parton died at the age of 80. As millions of fans mourn her passing, it will be family and friends who feel the pain the hardest. As more details emerge, her family has shared details about her final goodbye. 

After a life in front of the public, Parton’s funeral will be a private affair.  According to TMZ, Parton’s loved ones are preparing for a small Nashville gathering in the coming days, where her family and closest friends will come together privately to remember her. 

She is expected to be laid to rest wearing a cotton dress and high heels.

Parton’s representatives later confirmed to Page Six that keeping the funeral private was part of the singer’s own wishes. Her family has not announced plans for a large public funeral or memorial.

According to TMZ, Parton will be buried alongside her late husband, Carl Thomas Dean, who died in March 2025, at Woodlawn Memorial Park and Mausoleum in Nashville.

Nashville is particularly fitting for the singer. After growing up in a remote area near Sevierville in East Tennessee, Parton arrived in Nashville as a young woman in the 1960s to pursue her dreams in country music. It’s also the place she and Dean met outside a laundromat in 1964. 

Dolly Parton had a very specific final request

Parton’s nephew Bryan Seaver announced her passing in a video shared online. He served as her head of security for more than two decades.

In the emotional announcement, Seaver revealed that Parton wanted to rest “in a beautiful bed of plush cotton.” Seaver explained that “after a lifetime of wearing heavy rhinestones,” Parton “finally deserves to be comfortable and have some rest.”

He said that Parton asked to make the video announcement, saying it was “something Dolly asked of me years ago before I fully absorbed it as a future reality.”

Her family is asking fans to honor her differently

While the funeral itself will be private, Parton’s family is giving her enormous global fan base a way to participate in the mourning.

Rather than sending flowers, the family is asking people to make donations to the Imagination Library, Parton’s beloved literacy organization that provides free books to children

Through the Imagination Library, Parton turned her own love of books and education into one of her most significant philanthropic efforts, reaching children across the world.

Her team is also encouraging fans and friends around the world to share their memories online by tagging Parton on social media or leaving messages through her official website. 

Parton’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame has already been adorned. 

Dolly was still working just days before her death

Dolly Parton had been dealing with several health issues in the months before her death, including immune system and digestive problems, kidney stones, dehydration, dizziness and complications related to medication. 

Her health struggles forced her to cancel appearances, skip events and postpone her Las Vegas residency while she focused on recovering.

On Aug. 21, just four days before her death, Parton told PEOPLE that she had been through some “hard times with my health.” She explained that she had neglected some of her own health concerns while caring for Dean before his death in March 2025.

“I am dealing with some health issues that I just didn’t pay attention to when I was watching over Carl,” she said.

Just days before her death, she was still talking about future projects, including her plans to explore avatar performances as another way of connecting with audiences. “I’m still healin’, I’m still workin’,” she told PEOPLE.

Dolly’s private marriage

Parton spent more than six decades in the spotlight, but she was always selective about what she shared. That was especially true when it came to her marriage to Dean, whom she married in 1966. “I was surprised and delighted that while he talked to me, he looked at my face (a rare thing for me). He seemed to be genuinely interested in finding out who I was and what I was about,” she wrote on her website about their meeting. 

For him, it was love at first sight. “My first thought was I’m gonna marry that girl,” Dean said when they renewed their vows for their 50th wedding anniversary in 2016, per ET. “My second thought was, ‘Lord, she’s good-looking.’ And that was the day my life began.”

Dean died in March 2025 at 82, ending a nearly six-decade love story that Parton often described with humor and affection. He largely stayed out of the spotlight while Parton became a global superstar, and she repeatedly credited him with being her biggest supporter behind the scenes.

After his death, Parton admitted that she was still learning how to live without him. “I’m at peace that he’s at peace,” she said in 2025, while acknowledging that she still missed and loved him. She also described losing him as leaving “a hole in my heart.”

Soon, they will rest together in Nashville.