Mongoose document references with a one-to-many relationship

Refer to population, here extract an example from Mongoose.

var mongoose = require('mongoose')
, Schema = mongoose.Schema

var personSchema = Schema({
  _id     : Schema.Types.ObjectId,
  name    : String,
  age     : Number,
  stories : [{ type: Schema.Types.ObjectId, ref: 'Story' }]
});

var storySchema = Schema({
  _creator : { type: Schema.Types.ObjectId, ref: 'Person' },
  title    : String,
  fans     : [{ type: Schema.Types.ObjectId, ref: 'Person' }]
});

var Story  = mongoose.model('Story', storySchema);
var Person = mongoose.model('Person', personSchema);

So the example about, Story model stores related Person._id in Story._creator. When you find a document of Story, you can use populate() method to define which attribute in Person model you want to retrieve at the same time, such as:

Story.findOne({_id: 'xxxxxxx'}).populate('person', 'name age').exec(function(err, story) {
  console.log('Story title: ', story.title);
  console.log('Story creator', story.person.name);
});

I believe this is what you looking for. Or else, you can use nested collections instead.