A bright red casket with butterflies on it was center stage in a packed Los Angeles auditorium Wednesday as thousands of mourners bid farewell to Mexican-American singer Jenni Rivera.

Brassy music rang out in the Gibson Amphitheatre, which holds 6,100 people. Photos showing Rivera with her family flashed in the background. Fans chanted her name, waving white roses in the air.

"Jenni made it OK for women to be who they are," longtime manager Pete Salgado said, choking back tears and drawing cheers from the crowd. "Jenni also made it OK to be from nothing with the hopes of being something."

Rivera, whose soulful ballads sold out concert halls and made her a household name to many, died in a plane crash in a remote, mountainous area in northern Mexico on December 9. The crash killed everyone aboard the small plane, including Rivera's publicist, lawyer and makeup artists.

Family members called Wednesday's ceremony a "graduation to heaven," saying the singer's powerful spirit would live on and urging fans to keep her memory alive.

"I am sure that my sister is singing now," said Juan Manuel Rivera, one of her brothers.

Another family member, Gustavo Lawrence Rivera, asked crowds to applaud for "Jenni, the eternal diva."

Nicknamed "La Diva de la Banda" or The Diva of Banda Music, Rivera was a musical powerhouse with her Spanish-language performances of regional Mexican corridos, or ballads. Rivera sold 15 million records, according to Billboard, and recently won two Billboard Music Awards, including favorite Mexican music female artist.

She was reportedly on the verge of a crossover with an English-language sitcom inspired by the success of "I Love Jenni," a Spanish-language reality TV show on Telemundo's mun2 network.

'Perfectly imperfect'