The tsunami dead remembered
Updated on 11 May 2005
This has been a long journey for the family of Ross Baker, father Steve meeting up with other relatives and friends at Paddington station before today's service.
The Queen was among those who attended the service.
The words inside the card say "Fame, I'm going to live forever" but the 26-year-old singer was lost on the island Ko Phi Phi, where he'd been taking a break from the touring musical.
Father Steve Baker told Channel 4 News: "For me it's just another step in getting over the fact we have lost Rob. We haven't as yet got a body we can't make the final funeral arrangements."
His daughter Jodie Baker said: "We have had a celebration in the beginning of April and that helped his friends and family but this is lovely because it is more official."
The St Paul's service, for this and so many other families, marking a loss, but celebrating a life.
The Queen and political leaders, joined the hundreds of those who lost relatives as a result of the boxing day tragedy.
An estimated 273,000 people died in the tragedy, and 7,200 are missing.
Among the greiving families, Lord Attenborough, who lost his grandaughter, daugher and her mother in law, and who read a lesson.
He told those assembled: "Death will be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away."
The Archbishop of Canterbury said that despite the grief, the tragedy had demonstrated the strength of human love.
"So what is left when the waters have gone down again. Continuing pressure to rebuild, yes. Continuing pain and for many people, anger and bewilderment. But also a landscape where compassion and practical love can grow."
To a haunting Thai lament, a procession of 22 representaives from families and affected countries, placed candles at the altar.
And then the during two-minute silence, 300,000 petals released from the ceiling, in memory of all those who died, their gentle fluttering, so different from the force that nature released nearly five months ago.
