Día de los Muertos Graveside Tributes: How to Honor Loved Ones with Balloons & Ofrendas

On the first and second of November, cemeteries across Mexico and throughout Mexican-American communities do something no other night of the year asks of them. They fill up.

Families arrive in the afternoon with buckets and brushes and stay past dark. Graves are swept, weeded, washed, and then dressed — cempasúchil laid in paths, candles set at the headstone, photographs propped where they can be seen, and the food and drink the person loved put out where they can reach it.

If this is your first year doing it, or your first year doing it without the person who always used to organize it, here is what families actually bring — and where balloons fit into a tradition a great deal older than they are.

The two days are not the same

This catches out almost everyone who is new to it.

November 1st is Día de los Inocentes, also called Día de los Angelitos — the day for children who died. Graves are dressed in white and in light, bright colors. Toys are left. Sweets rather than strong drink. The whole tone of the day is tender.

November 2nd is Día de los Muertos proper — the day for adults. The colors deepen. Favorite dishes appear, and the things the person actually liked: a bottle, a pack of cigarettes, a team's colors.

Families honoring both a child and an adult often visit on both days rather than combining them, and bring something different each time.

What families bring to the grave

The traditional elements each carry a job. They are not decoration in the ordinary sense — between them they are meant to guide the person home, tell them they are in the right place, and give them something once they arrive.

• Cempasúchil — marigolds. Petals are scattered in a path from the gate or the road to the grave itself. The color and the scent are what the spirits follow.
• Candles — one for each person being remembered, and often one extra for the forgotten dead nobody comes to visit.
• A photograph — so there is no confusion about whose grave has been prepared.
• Water and food — the journey is long. Water first, then pan de muerto, then whatever they loved.
• Papel picado — cut tissue banners. The movement in them is said to show the spirits have arrived.
• Copal or incense — to clear the space before the welcome.
• Balloons — a newer addition, and the one most families ask about.

Where balloons fit

Balloons are not traditional. Nobody is going to pretend otherwise. They arrived in the last few decades, mostly through families in the United States, and they have stayed for two practical reasons.

The first is that a panteón on the night of the 2nd is crowded, and a grave dressed only in flowers disappears among a hundred others. Something at head height reads from across the row. Families use them to find each other in the dark as much as anything else.

The second is that cempasúchil does not survive a cold night and a windy morning, and a grave that looked beautiful on the 1st can look neglected by the afternoon of the 2nd. Foil holds its color through both days.

Our Día de los Muertos balloon is a 17-inch heart with angel wings, two to a pack, in six colors — it takes air or helium and works tied to a marker or standing on an ofrenda indoors. If you would rather not deal with helium at all, the 8-inch balloons on a stick are air-filled and push straight into the ground beside the headstone, where they stay upright through both days and usually a good while after.

Colors and what they carry

If you are choosing, the traditional palette is not arbitrary — each color is doing something.

• Orange and yellow — the marigold. The path home.
• Purple — mourning, and the grace carried alongside it.
• Pink — celebration, and the joy of a life that was actually lived.
• White — purity and hope. Traditionally for a child, which is why the 1st leans white.
• Red — blood and life, and a love that did not stop.
• Black — used sparingly, and more in calavera imagery than at the grave itself.

A cluster that puts marigold orange against deep purple and pink echoes the tradition without looking like it came out of a party aisle.

How to make a Día de los Muertos balloon arch

An arch over the headstone, or over the entrance to a family plot, has become one of the more striking things you will see on the 2nd. It is also less work than it looks.

1. Decide where it stands. Over the headstone, or framing the path in. Measure roughly — a 6-foot arch takes about 40 to 50 balloons of mixed sizes.
2. Use air, not helium. An arch is built on a frame or a strip, so it needs no lift, and air-filled foil will hold shape through both days where helium sags by the second morning.
3. Build the color run first. Lay the balloons out on the ground in the order they will go — orange, purple, pink, orange, white — before you attach anything. Correcting a built arch is miserable.
4. Anchor both feet properly. Cemetery ground is uneven and often windy. Sandbags or stakes at each base, not bricks.
5. Add the marigolds last, woven through the gaps, so the arch reads as part of the grave rather than an object sitting on top of it.

Check with the cemetery office first if you are building anything freestanding. Most have no objection for the 1st and 2nd specifically, but a few ask that it comes down the same night.

The ofrenda at home

Not every family can get to the grave. The ofrenda does the same work indoors.

Traditionally it is built in levels — two for earth and heaven, three to add purgatory, seven for the stages of the journey. Photographs and any religious figures go highest. Food, water, salt and candles go on the level below. Personal things — their tools, their glasses, a letter — go at the bottom, closest to the person standing there.

Marigold petals run from the front door to the ofrenda itself, for the same reason they run from the cemetery gate to the grave.

Questions families ask

Is Día de los Muertos the same as Halloween?

No. They fall beside each other on the calendar and share some imagery, but the intent is opposite. Halloween keeps the dead at a distance. Día de los Muertos invites them in and feeds them.

Can you put balloons on a grave for Día de los Muertos?

At nearly every cemetery, yes — weighted or staked tributes are permitted almost everywhere. What many now restrict is the release of balloons into the sky, for environmental reasons. A tribute that stays at the headstone avoids the question entirely.

Do the balloons need helium?

Only if you want them floating. The 8-inch stick balloons are air-filled by design, and the 17-inch hearts take air perfectly well if you are tying them to a marker rather than letting them rise.

When should I order?

By October 22 for a November 1st visit. Orders ship within one business day from Sun Valley, California, free over $14.99 — but the last week of October is the busiest stretch of our year, and ordering early takes the panic out of it.

What do you say at the grave?

Their name, out loud, is usually enough and is often all anyone wanted. Families who speak say they are glad they did; families who stood in silence more often wish they had not.

So the day does not slip past you

November comes around fast, and the families we hear from rarely forget the person — they lose track of the calendar.

We will keep the dates for you. Add their name, their birthday and the day they left, and a quiet note arrives about two weeks before each one, every year, with enough time to order and plan and get everyone to the same place.

Set a free reminder in the form on this page.

See the Día de los Muertos balloon — six colors, two to a pack — or browse all memorial balloons, forty-seven designs, every one heart-shaped, every one with angel wings, every one made to stand outdoors. You may also want what to bring to a graveside visit or the complete guide to graveside decorations.