WATCH: Did a Texas Chef Refuse to Cater This Couple's Wedding?

A same-sex couple in Plano, Texas, have pressed "pause" on their wedding planning in the wake of alleged antigay comments from a hotel chef.

Daren Merchant and Rick O'Connor have been together for more than 20 years, and after the Supreme Court brought marriage equality to all 50 states in June, the couple began planning for their long-awaited legal wedding.

"We both had kind of agreed we wanted to do it legally, and we wanted to do it with friends," Merchant told Dallas TV station KDFW. "We didn't want to just run to the justice of the peace."

The couple set a date -- January 1, 2016 -- and began planning their ceremony, to be hosted at the Plano Hilton Garden Inn, where Merchant's daughter works.

That's when things turned ugly, say the couple. Merchant's daughter told her father she heard several disparaging comments from other staffers about her dad's upcoming wedding, most prolifically from the hotel chef.

"The chef was refusing to do the dinner for the reception," Merchant told KDFW. "He had major issues with us being a gay couple. About us having the right to be married, about it creating the apocalypse, about it causing all sorts of other issues, comparing us to Caitlyn Jenner."

Merchant took to social media, complaining that his efforts to contact Hilton's corporate offices and management at the Plano location were repeatedly brushed aside, with messages and emails left unreturned.

"I tweeted a short sentence about [the] issue and all of the sudden Hilton took notice," Merchant wrote in a Facebook post Saturday, according to Towleroad's John Wright. "It took more a week [for] Terry Martinez, the general manager of the hotel to call me. ... I informed her that I was told by corporate that she was to contact me and apologize about the situation and [guarantee] me that she was taking the matter seriously and would get to the bottom of it. She said none of this and in fact seemed very annoyed and bitter."

"I'm tired of waiting and decided to start to spread the word of how Hilton actually treats its LGBT guests," Merchant's Facebook post concluded. "We have been loyal Hilton guests for as long as I can remember but I will never stay at a Hilton property of any kind against and hope that people think twice about doing the same."

Hilton officials issued a statement about the incident to KDFW, noting that the company has been "unable to substantiate" the couple's claim about the chef's refusal to serve them.

"We understand that this situation has caused extensive friend and stress for the guest, and the LGBT community," Hilton's statement reads. "We welcome everyone to our hotel, and emphasize that we have zero tolerance for any discrimination of guests or staff members."

Hilton Worldwide, the overarching company that controls most Hilton properties, including the brand's Garden Inn locations, received a perfect score of 100 in the Human Rights Campaign's latest Buyers' Guide.

Watch KDFW's report below.