Tom and I really only considered a couple caterers, and we were lucky in that our wedding planner was really not a wedding planner, but a food/restaurant person herself; so she knew the people we were talking with personally. That said, we would not have been put off by a tasting fee, for the exact reason that you noted - we would have understood that there is a cost to the food. If I remember correctly, Sugar Woods, who did our cakes, charged us for cupcakes of our possible cake flavors, which we didn't mind paying at all.
I would think that since you're not looking to grow a huge business doing this, that the people for whom you are actually considering working would respect your skills and talents enough that they wouldn't mind paying a nominal fee. (Wow - apologize for that really convoluted run on sentence
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