Decorations for gravesites have a harried reputation in pop culture. Usually, you see the main character rushing to pick up a grocery store bouquet of flowers and dropping it in a vase full of dried flower petals.
What Hollywood hasn't caught onto is that decorating graves can be a beautiful, intimate, and creative way to channel your grief. From colorful stone mosaics to macabre skeleton stakes, these are a few grave decorating ideas you migth want to try.
Beautiful Gravesite Decoration Ideas to Memorialize Your Loved Ones
An undecorated grave can be a startling reminder that your loved one's actually gone. With a few personal touches and a little creative inspiration, you can bring beauty to any gravesite and help keep your loved one's memory alive.
1. Make Unique Flower Arrangements to Brighten Their Site
Flowers are everybody's go-to when they visit a gravesite. But you don't have to limit yourself to a fresh bouquet. Instead, you can make it really special and bring something more unexpected.
- Set up succulents at the base of a grave since they'll last a lot longer than fresh flowers.
- If there's an area to plant your own flowers, you can add some of the deceased's favorites.
- If the cemetery allows additions, you can set up stakes for hanging planters.
- Using fake flowers and craft wire, you can weave a small wreath to hang or rest on the headstone.
- Plant a flower-border around the gravesite with petite flowers like petunias or pansies.
2. Commemorate Their Love of Animals With Feeders
If your lost loved one was a huge animal lover, then you might want to bypass traditional decorations for something more up their alley. Say, an animal feeder. Encourage wild animals to visit your loved one's grave by putting up a small bird feeder, or box full of wildlife food, that they can come and enjoy.
Similarly, you could put up a small bird house or bird bath next to the grave site to keep birds coming year-round.
3. Use the Fiber Arts to Make Sentimental Pieces
The fiber arts includes all sorts of textile crafts like crocheting, knitting, quilting, and more. If you want to add a cozy and personal touch to a loved one's grave, you could use your skills in the fiber arts to create a commemorative banner, flower holder, or large bow. Or, you could support your local businesses by commissioning a nearby fiber artist to make something for you.
4. Bring Items That Represent New Milestones
One way to make a grave feel more inviting is to surround it with new pieces of your life. For example, you could leave a picture from a graduation, a card with your new baby's foot prints stamped on it, a swatch of your wedding dress, or other meaningful gravesite items.
5. Set Up Festive Decorations During the Holidays
If you live close to a loved one's grave, you've got the chance to decorate their resting place for every holiday. Add little skeleton figurines and pumpkins for Halloween or a desk-sized Christmas tree for Christmas. Since you're only limited by the space you have, you can go all out for the holidays.
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6. Create Colorful Mosaics with Garden Gravel
If you want a decoration that's low-maintenance, adding gravel to their plot is a perfect idea for you. You can get all sorts of garden gravel in various colors, sizes, and textures.
And if you've got a knack for the arts, you can take the different colors (or spray paint them) to create real-life mosaics. Start simple with small designs like hearts, smiley faces, or flowers and work your way up to more complex ones.
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7. Leave Pictures for Other Visitors to Meet Your Loved Ones
People often go to the grave wanting to be remembered, and a way you can honor that is by leaving pictures of your loved ones at their gravesite. This way, other cemetery visitors can meet them from beyond the grave.
8. Order a Grave Blanket to for a Bold Touch
Grave blankets are large rectangular blankets that you commission and customize with whatever designs or phrases you want. Usually people add the deceased's name, photo, and a few other phrases as well. You can use a few heavy rocks as an eco-friendly way to pin the grave blanket down.
Things to Do Before Decorating a Gravesite
We know how consuming creativity can be, but there are a few things you need to know and check on before you order or make any decorations. Not every gravesite or cemetery is the same, and you want to make sure that you follow any rules in place:
- Check with the cemetery staff to see if anything's banned. Depending on the cemetery's location and age, there might be decorations that they don't allow.
- Ask the cemetery staff what they do to maintain the graves. Not every groundskeeping staff at a cemetery will routinely deep clean each grave under their care. So, you might need to bring cleaning supplies, pest killer, etc. along with your decorations.
- Don't plant flowers if you're not prepared to water them. If you want to plant flowers, make sure you live close enough to be able to water them throughout the week. Not every cemetery's groundskeepers will care for your personal decorations.
- Find out what type of marker is at the grave. Some graves have full-sized headstones, other's plaques on the ground, and so on. You don't want to make a huge mantel piece to set on a headstone only to find a slightly raised plaque instead.
You Can Go Beyond Tradition With Gravesite Decorations
While traditional gravesite displays like flowers and pebbles are beautiful additions, they're not the only decorations you can put together. Don't feel limited by how other people decorate the graves under their care. If you have a creative vision and want to celebrate your loved one's life in a totally unique direction, don't feel restricted in honoring them in the way that is most meaningful and beautiful to you.
