What the night is for
Functionally, it feeds the wedding party after the rehearsal. Actually, it is the one evening where the two families meet properly, before anyone is busy. If it goes well, the wedding day feels like people who already know each other. If it is rushed, the wedding is the first real introduction, and that shows.
Size it honestly
The traditional list is the wedding party, immediate family and out-of-town guests. That last category has a way of growing. Decide whether you are inviting everyone who travelled or only the people standing up with you, and decide it before you start looking at venues — the two versions are very different bookings.
A private room beats a good restaurant
A rehearsal dinner in the main dining room of a busy restaurant has a specific failure mode: nobody can hear, toasts are impossible, and the table is too long and narrow for anyone to talk to more than two people. A private space, even a plainer one, almost always produces a better evening.
Ask specifically whether the space is genuinely private or a section of a larger room, because those are described the same way and are not the same thing.
Keep it shorter than you think
Two and a half hours is plenty. There is a wedding tomorrow, people have travelled, and a rehearsal dinner that runs past ten has a cost the next day. Start early, eat well, let the toasts happen, and let people go.
Toasts want a room that holds sound
This is the practical reason to care about the space. Toasts at a rehearsal dinner are usually the loosest and best of the whole weekend. They need a room where one voice carries without a microphone — which means a smaller room with soft surfaces, not a hall.
Geography around Columbia and Moberly
The practical question is drive time from wherever the wedding is and wherever people are staying. Anything much beyond half an hour starts costing you guests, particularly older relatives who would rather not drive an unfamiliar road at night. Somewhere between the two is usually better than somewhere convenient for only one side.
If you are working out a rehearsal dinner for a Mid-Missouri wedding, send us the date.