I’ll hazard a guess that Celebrant Institute members and other celebrant colleagues have been battered with marketing and emails from Bark.com over the past month as I have been. I wanted to explain what they do, so you can make an informed decision about joining them – or any other website like them – and then I have a closing idea on how to get rid of them forever.

Who is Bark?

Bark is an aggregator.

Screenshot of an email sent to Josh Withers from Bark

What is an aggregator?

Ben Thompson’s Aggregation Theory outlines how the internet has fundamentally shifted value creation in industries. He defines it as follows:

Aggregation Theory is the process by which companies in the internet age achieve dominance by aggregating users, leveraging a direct relationship with them, and controlling demand rather than supply.

In the wedding industry, applying Aggregation Theory can illuminate how consumer behaviour, supplier relationships, and market control have evolved.

Here’s how the core tenets of the theory manifest in the field of weddings and celebrancy: how couples (end users) interact with celebrants/vendors.

Traditionally, wedding planning relied heavily on word-of-mouth recommendations, in-person consultations, and localised marketplaces.

Now, platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and wedding vendor aggregators (e.g., Bark, OneFlare, Celebrante, or Easy Weddings) act as points of discovery and interaction.

These platforms aggregate demand by becoming the go-to resource for couples, offering inspiration, tools, and direct vendor access.

What does Bark do?

There are no secret stashes of couples (brides and grooms) that Bark has exclusive access to. Bark is getting their leads from the same place you and I are getting – or want to get – them from. They are sitting alongside our Google search results, Meta Ads, etc.

Screenshot of an email sent to Josh Withers from Bark

So their game is to use their brand strength, marketing knowledge, muscle, and investment dollars, to outspend you – in either dollars or time – until they convince you to pay them instead of Google.

You get to choose because Bark (OneFlare, Easy Weddings, all of them) and you are fishing from the same pond. You can get the fish directly or from the aggregators.

How can we end this?

I don’t care for other companies complicating the ‘choosing a celebrant’ process, I just want the right people to find me and book me for what I do and who I am. Not because I’m on Bark or Easy Weddings.

So the easiest way to eliminate these money-wasting companies that want to get in between us and our couples is to simply take the oxygen out of the room: stop paying.

Do not buy the packs, do not buy the credits. The people allegedly frantically looking for a celebrant will indeed go to Google and search on their own.

If we stop paying all these aggregators they’ll simply stop trying, and once again the Google ads space will be freed up for you and I to advertise in.

Now we just need to figure out how to stop writing cheques to California to run our business, but that’s a problem for another day.

P.S. The last time I did this was in 2014 and Yellowpages included my name and also generic celerbancy terms in a billboard ‘search with Yellow’ campaign I’m guessing to try and convince people to use Yellow to book me?