Highland Stables and GypsyMoon Marketplace charm and delight

Before Highland Stables hosted gorgeous weddings and highly curated shopping events, the 25,000-square foot building served as a boarding and training facility for Tennessee walking horses. Built by Charles Mosley in 2000 as a gift to his wife, Betty, the stables served as the dream embodiment of her lifelong passion for horses.

Since then, a few things about the building may have changed, but the original sentiment remains. “We have an attachment and love for this big, old building,” says Angie Mosley, the couple’s daughter-in-law and one of the founders of Highland Stables, a wedding venue that also hosts the wildly popular biannual barn sale events, GypsyMoon Marketplace. “We like to say the love continues through our events and our market. It’s also kind of the evolution of the family farm at this point in time.”

From barn to brilliant

When the family transformed the building in 2014 from a horse haven to an all-season event space, they weren’t always sure what the next steps would be, Angie says. But with the help of her daughter-in-law, Whitnee Mosley, and Whitnee’s friend, Kaleighn LaBore, Angie pushed forward.
“Honestly, our first dream was hosting GypsyMoon Marketplace — even more so than the weddings,” she says. “But hosting weddings made sense. Now it’s almost two full-time businesses.”

As a wedding venue, Highland Stables offers indoor and outdoor wedding and reception space for up to 990 guests. But most weddings there tend to stay in the 200- to 250-guest range, says Kaleighn, who coordinates wedding bookings. The beautifully lit, Southern-style venue is surrounded by 168 acres of farmland located just a few miles from the city. They also offer a four-bedroom, two-bath home for short-term rentals.

Happy place

GypsyMoon Marketplace is a three-day barn sale event that happens twice a year — in April and late fall. The next GypsyMoon will be on Nov. 9, 10, and 11 and will include about 80 vendors from several states, as well as visits from Santa Claus. Vendors will sell everything from clothing, food and home decor to vintage items, pottery and other unique products.

“We have vendors set up inside of our horse stalls, as well as outside and pretty much everywhere,” says Whitnee, co-creator of GypsyMoon Marketplace and a big force behind the events. “We have food trucks and live music. It’s just a really cool and different shopping event.”

Vendors for the event are carefully selected and their booths are highly stylized, so customers can enjoy GypsyMoon Marketplace as an experience, not just a shopping trip. “We spend a lot of time curating vignettes all over the stables,” Angie says. “We want to give people a place where they can come in and leave stress behind and make memories.”

They work with vendors to create the perfect atmosphere, Whitnee says. “We try to find people who do a really good job of setting up their space, and we encourage each and every vendor to create their own storefront,” she says. “It makes it feel really special, and it creates a memory. People have said it’s like walking into a Hallmark movie.”

Shooting for the moon

As the popularity of the venue and marketplace has grown, Angie, Whitnee and Kaleighn continue to grow and change with it by staying flexible and meeting challenges head-on. “When I started helping Angie, it was just her and me,” Whitnee says. “We just kind of winged it. As the years went by, Kaleighn came on board, and she had some new ideas. We also take classes, and we try to stay up on things and to not get stale.”

One of their better ideas, they say, was installing NCTC’s fiber broadband throughout the property. “NCTC was life-changing for us,” Whitnee says. “We basically had dial-up before, the previous provider’s service was so bad. A lot of the time, we had to run off hotspots from our phones, and it really caused problems for our vendors. Now, they don’t have to run outside to get their cellphones to process payments.”

“NCTC’s service has really changed how we work in the office, too,” Angie adds. “Marketing our business is all done online, so we love it.”

The efficiency of a reliable, high-speed broadband network helps them take the business in new directions, too. “We have a Loretta Lynn quote hanging in our office,” Whitnee says. “It says, ‘You either have to be first, best or different.’ That’s our goal — to think differently.”

Story courtesy of NCTC.