Floral Arrangements

Last night, Jared and I went to meet with the florist for our wedding. Obviously, we were there to discuss what kind of floral arrangements we want for our "big day." We talked and talked and looked at picture after picture of different arrangements and individual flowers. It's a little bit crazy how many options there are. It also takes a lot of imagination to decide what you will like - especially if you haven't ever really seen half of the flowers you're considering.

What has struck me this morning, though, is the reasoning behind it. We use flowers all the time for decoration. But why? There are surely hundreds, if not thousands, of nurseries around the world that grow flowers simply for the purpose of being tossed in a bouquet. I'm thinking it's not a good use of natural resources. It is wasteful. It is a misuse of the land. Is this practice Biblical, I wonder?

I don't know. I still want flowers in my wedding. They're beautiful, and despite the fact that they've been cut down and are slowly dying, I feel like they will bring more life (and color) to the ceremony. I've discovered that flowers all have "meanings," so I now want to check on the ones we picked out. If any of them have negative meanings, I'll suggest something different.

I said that using flowers in a wedding is wasteful. But, really, something I'm struggling with throughout all this wedding planning is that the whole thing is wasteful. My parents will probably put out around $5000 for a single day. Granted, it is an important day in our lives. We do want it to be special. But is it possible to do something special without it being wasteful...?