Not a lawyer at all, just a musician who has been gigging for over 10 years, even opening for a band that was, at the time, pretty popular. Lots and lots of gigging experience, including weddings.

The amount you were offered is very sketchy IMO, and depending on your instrument/role and number of sets played, it might even be considered "unicorn tier" pay, as in, it's so high it's probably as real as a unicorn.

Plus there's the fact two other musicians are in the same situation with you. That's $900, and usually a wedding gig doesn't rake in that level of dough, when you factor in the extra pay for the core band members.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was just used as bait. Your situation sounds a lot like what went on with the brass/woodwind players for a couple bands I gigged in for years - except we actually paid them, but their pay was maybe 1/4 of what each core member took in, because we just hired them for specific gigs, and they didn't play in all the songs, nor did they need to come to a ton of practice sessions.

But they always got told the pay upfront, then got paid right after the gig. Same night.

If I had been in your situation, I'd definitely have told the local music community, but considering you might want to go to court over it, I'd defer to the other people here as to what you should do/say, because I am completely unqualified to give legal advice

I'm just posting to say that from a gigging musician's point of view, the whole situation looks really sketchy, and no legitimate band would act like that unless they were trying to scam you. It really looks like they scammed you, from my point of view.