<human>: We're getting married in the Chicago area in May and we went to our first dinner tasting tonight. The food was sub-par, and even unacceptable in some cases. For one dish, we couldn't even put a fork through the main ingredient because it was rock hard; we asked why this was the case and were told that it was at least a day old (WTF?!), and that they don't prepare it fresh daily because 'its too much work'. 
In another case, they brought out a meat-based dish when we had specifically mentioned that we are vegetarians. 
That's just two example. In both cases, the manager was unapologetic and showed no remorse. 

Some details:

- We are working with a wedding planning company and are encouraged to select from their preferred caterer list (which includes this restaurant). This restaurant also has 4/5 stars on Yelp. 

- We scheduled this tasting many weeks in advance with a list of menu items we wanted to taste -- so they had the opportunity be well prepared to give us their best effort. 

My question to you:

- Our contract with the wedding planning company says that we get 1 free tasting. Turns out the tasting is only 'free' if we sign a contract with the caterer. If we do not sign, we have to pay for the tasting. 

Well, there is no way we're signing with this caterer. In fact, if I was at this restaurant as a normal customer coming in for dinner, I probably would have asked to have the food to be sent back to the kitchen after 1 bite and would not have paid for most of it. 

So not only was it a complete waste of time, BUT because of the contract, I'm concerned that I'll have to pay for it ($1-200?)...and I don't feel like I should have to. What do you guys think? What are my options?

Can you provide a brief rundown of the text in within 3 sentences?
<bot>: tasting was terrible, not just because it 'wasn't our style' but the quality and service were severely lacking. Am I still obligated to pay for this tasting?