Rehearsal Dinner Hibachi on 30A

Rehearsal dinners on 30A run into a specific problem: the venues that can seat thirty are the same venues booked for weddings, and their private-dining minimums in season are set for wedding budgets. Meanwhile both families are already staying within a few blocks of each other, usually in houses with decks that seat more people than any restaurant will give you at one table.

Cooking at the house removes the venue line item entirely and replaces the awkward part of the evening — the stretch where two families who have just met are making conversation — with something to watch.

Above eighteen guests we bring a second chef and two stations, which for a rehearsal dinner is nearly always the right call: thirty people eating in two waves is how the evening splits into two conversations. Two stations means everyone is served within a few minutes of each other.

Tell us if there are toasts. We hold the fried rice course so the grill is quiet when people speak, rather than someone shouting over a flat-top. It is a small thing and it is the difference between a speech landing and a speech being endured.

WaterSound and WaterColor take most of our rehearsal dinners, because both have the deck sizes and the privacy, and in WaterSound's case a gate that keeps the evening to the invited. Rosemary Beach courtyards work beautifully for smaller ones — twenty or fewer — where the lantern light does all the styling.

Miramar Beach and Sandestin take the bigger ones, where a gulf-front deck can hold forty without anyone standing.