Subject: Guidance with selecting typeface for family gravestone...

[First time poster, here. Just did comprehensive search of the forums for similar questions, and understandably found only a few on target (last one back in 2011).]

Hi all,

I appreciate any guidance you might provide on this matter --- I'm trying to select a typeface for the burial headstone for a close female family member (passed away at ripe old age). I'd like the typeface to convey a sense of her strong family ties, as well as her great warmth combined with her no-nonsense/resilient approach to life.

Context: my strong preference would be to find an actual stone-carver and let him do his magic, but that's cost prohibitive, especially since the cost of this sandblasted headstone is already included in the overall package price of the burial. Alas, the funeral home seems to have a very poor aesthetic --- everything is Times Roman (with truly terrible kerning). Long story short, I'm trying to prevent such a design memorializing a loved-on for perpetuity, by providing a camera-ready layout myself (the funeral home will then cut my layout into granite). I'm by no means a professional graphic designer, but I'm at least reasonably comfortable with my own aesthetic.

So far, I've been selecting potential typefaces from among those I already own (all within Adobe's Font Folio), as I'm best able to tell if they're a good match by setting the actual full headstone (name, dates, message, etc) in the typeface (and I don't want to needlessly purchase typefaces just to explore). That being said, if I'm convinced I should use one I don't own, I can purchase something / anything extra.

One direct question, and then one that's more open-ended:

(1) Some of the typefaces that made my final round are part of Adobe's Opticals collection (which means I own them in caption, sub-head, text, and display optical sizes). While normally I would imagine that the display type should be used for such a huge element (100s of points), I'm not sure if similar logic should be transferred from the realm of "ink on paper" to "cuts in granite". Obviously, display types generally have increased stroke contrast (compared to text types), and this seems like a potentially complicating factor for stone-cutting (sandblasting, in my case).

Your thoughts on this, please? Should I just ignore the actual size of the type, and select a "text" type from within the Opticals collection?

(2) I'm open to suggestions on typefaces beyond what I've considered, please. Currently, my final list is:

Adobe Jenson Pro Opticals
Adobe Kepler Std Medium Opticals
Adobe Goudy Old-Style Bold

I've reviewed every font mentioned on the three existing Typophile forum threads on this topic, and a number of them are either too stylized, or too "sans serif" to fit the overall (but definitely not exactly uniform) style of other markers within our family plot. However, I did like the following typeface suggestions made in other threads:

Centaur
Adobe Minion
ITC Golden Cockerel Titling
Bitstream Iowan Old-Style
Albertus

and will consider adding these to the pile under consideration (of course, I already own the ones on my current final list, and don't own any of these new ones, but I can handle that as necessary).

One final note, FWIW: the headstone will also include some Hebrew (actual typeface currently undecided and likely subject of a separate forum thread after I finalize this choice).

Thanks for your consideration, and any thoughts or assistance is gratefully received...